"Let me see, you want to get rid of four stones," said the doctor, genially; "well, that's not a very severe case. It will take you four or five months; you must take no liberties with yourself and I will send you a card this evening telling you exactly what you may and may not eat and drink. You must live by the card, literally by the card. Remember, no vagaries, no irregularities, no coquetting with the 'one time that never hurts one.' You must make up your mind that you will give up your own will until you have reached the required standard, and believe me, dear lady, you will be a happier woman, a healthier woman and a handsomer woman when you have attained your object." Regina wrote a check and went out into the sunlight, out of the land of liberty and into the straight and narrow path of a strict and severe _régime_. CHAPTER XXVII ROUND EVERYWHERE Young eyes see so clearly that we must often be very thankful that young people do not have the deciding voice in our lives. Regina duly received the promised card or diet sheet. I may say that she took it from its enveloping wrapper with a certain feeling of mystery akin to awe, and she studied its items carefully. Its directions were many and explicit; it not only gave the foods which she might eat, but also the foods which she might not eat, the drinks she might take and the drinks she might not take, and it gave the weights of each portion and the number of each special biscuit. Acting according to the instructions from the specialist, Regina had ordered a sufficient quantity of the specially prepared diet biscuits which were part of the _régime_, and it occurred to her, when the parcel arrived a little later than the diet sheet reached her, that she would have to account to her husband and family for the startling change in her diet. Now, Regina was perfectly sure of one thing: that she would be most unwise to tell Alfred the exact nature of the _régime_ on which she was about to start. She felt that a wife who was taking elaborate means, and undergoing great self-sacrifice, putting herself into prison, so to speak, for the sole and express purpose of thinning herself down, would show to great disadvantage beside a person of the plump order who was probably twenty years her junior, and able to peck greedily at the most fattening kinds of food. So Regina entered upon a course of what I may call harmless prevarication. "I have something to tell you, dear Alfred," she said that evening when he had well dined and had not noticed that she had passed about half the items of dinner; "I want to have a little talk with you." "Yes, my dear girl, about having a celebration of the home-coming? Oh yes, you would wish it, and, of course it was arranged before the wedding." "No, it is about myself." "Yourself, dearest? And what about yourself?" "Alfred, I have not been feeling myself lately." "Why--how--what d'you mean? You're not ill, are you?"