her so much that she died shortly afterward.  Of course, he had to be shut up again; and a man named Edward Jacobs, a shrewd Jew, who was his confidential clerk, carried on the business in his absence.  Now, both Horne and his wife had had the fullest confidence in this Jacobs, but he turned out all wrong.  As soon as he learned, at the end of about twelve months, that Horne was coming out again, he decamped with everything he could lay his hands on; and from the position of affairs you may guess that he made a very good haul.  Well, poor Horne found himself in a maze of difficulties; in fact, his clerk’s fraud ruined him.  Everything that could be sold or mortgaged had to go to the settlement, and when his affairs had been finally put straight, there was only a little bit left, that had been so settled upon his wife that no one could touch it.  He made a good fight of it for a little while, with the help of a few old friends, but, in the end, he broke down again for the third time.  But he escaped out of the asylum and went abroad, without seeing his friends or his child, and a few months afterward the announcement of his death in an American asylum was sent by a correspondent out there.  Happily there were no difficulties about securing the mother’s money for the son, and it was enough to educate the boy and to give him a start; but, of course, he had to begin the world as a poor man instead of a rich one.  Perhaps that was all the better for him—­or so I thought until lately.”

“And what are these signs of a morbid tendency that you spoke of?” asked the doctor.

“Well, in the first place, after being almost extravagant in his devotion to my daughter, Doreen, he now neglects her outrageously—­comes down very seldom, writes short letters or none.  Now, my daughter is not the sort of girl that a sane man would neglect,” added Doctor Wedmore, proudly.

“Certainly not,” assented the doctor, inwardly thinking that it was much less surprising than it would have been in the case of one of his own girls.

“In the second place, he is always harping upon the subject of Jacobs and his peculations—­an old subject, which he might well let rest.  And, in the third place, he has become moody, morose and absent-minded; and my son, Max, who often visits him at his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, has noticed the change even more than I, who have fewer opportunities of seeing him.”

The doctor was puffing stolidly at his pipe and looking at the fire.

“It is very difficult to form an opinion upon report only,” said he.  “Frankly, I can see nothing in what you have told me about the young man which could not be explained in other and likelier ways.  He may have got entangled, for instance, with some woman in London.”

Mr. Wedmore took fire at this suggestion.

“In that case, the sooner Doreen forgets all about him the better.”

“Mind, I’m only suggesting!” put in the doctor, hastily.  “There may be a dozen more reasons—­”