"And you can't shake it off, and wait?"

"I am afraid it is because I have failed in that, that I have come to you. I suppose I am demanding the impossible asking you to 'minister to a mind diseased.""

"I don't mind ministering to a mind diseased at all—if it is not too diseased to carry out my instructions. In this age of worry and strain one laughs at the stories of the old doctors, who declined to undertake a case if the patient had anything on his mind. They would not have a very flourishing practice now-a-days. Thousands of worries and not a few suicides might be prevented by the timely use of a simple tonic. Prosaic, isn't it?"

"Prove it true in my case, and I shall be grateful to you all my life. I don't play the part of invalid con amore."

"That I believe.

Easter holiday?"

What are you going to do with your

"I am not going to leave town,—at least not for more than a few days."

"Why not?"

Mona's appearance did not suggest the lack of means, to which Dr Alice Bateson was pretty well accustomed in her practice.

"I want to get on with my hospital work; and besides, it is work that keeps one sane."

"That is quite true up to a certain point. I suppose you have friends that you can go to?"

"Yes. My aunt wants me to go to Bournemouth with her," Mona admitted unwillingly.

"And is she a congenial companion?"

"Thoroughly; but I should mope myself to death." "Not if you follow my advice. Live on the cliffs the whole day long, read what will rest you, and take a tonic that will make you eat in spite of yourself."

She asked a few more questions, and then consulted Mona very frankly about the ingredients of her prescription. Dr Bateson did not at all believe in making a mystery of her

art, nor in drawing a hard-and-fast line between students and doctors.

"Thank you very much indeed," Mona said, rising and tendering her fee.

"Nonsense! we are none of us cannibals, as your great Scotch Esculapius says. I don't take fees from students and nurses."

"But I am not studying in order to support myself."

"I can't help that. Now I wonder if you mean to take my advice as well as my tonic?" She asked the question quite dispassionately, as if it only interested her in an abstract way.

"If you don't accept a fee," Mona said, in an injured tone, "you bind me over to take your advice."

"Ah! if that's the case, I wish I could afford to refuse fees from all my patients. Good-bye. Send me a line from Bournemouth to tell me how you get on. I wish I could be of more use to you!" And for the first time a look of very genuine sympathy shot from the honest brown eyes.

"Well?" said Sir Douglas, when he saw Mona next day. "Dr Bateson says I am to go to Bournemouth with Aunt Maud."

"Nonsense! Did she really?"

Warmly as Sir Douglas approved of women-doctors, it was a source of great surprise to him that they should recommend anything sensible.

And so it came to pass that Mona began by degrees to pick up fresh health and strength in spite of everything. She could not shake off her worry; but day by day, to her own surprise, it weighed on her more bearably.

One morning near the end of April she took up a copy of the Times, and her eye fell on the following notice—“On the 23d inst., at Carlton Lodge, Borrowness, Eleanor Jane, relict of the late George Hamilton, Esq., J.P. and D.L. of the County, in her 79th year."

"So she came home to die," Mona thought; "and now

now I suppose he will come up to London and go on with his work. I wonder if he will present himself at Burlington House for his medal next month? For, if he does, I shall see him."

And it was well that Presentation Day was so near, or Dr Bateson might have been disappointed, after all, in the results of her prescription.

CHAPTER LIV.

PRESENTATION DAY.

The eventful day dawned at last, clear and bright, with a summer sky and a fresh spring breeze.

"One would think I was a bride at the very least," Mona said, laughing, when Lucy and Evelyn came in to help her to dress.

66 If you think we would take this amount of trouble for a common or garden bride," said Lucy loftily, "you are profoundly mistaken. Bride, indeed!"

Sir Douglas had insisted on giving Mona an undergraduate's gown, heavy and handsome as it could be made; and the sight of her in that, and in a most becoming trencher, did more to reconcile him to her study of medicine than any amount of argument could have done.

"Distinctly striking!" was Mona's comment, when Lucy and Evelyn stopped dancing round her, and allowed her to see herself in the pier-glass. And she was perfectly right. Never in all her bright young life had she looked so charming as she did that Presentation Day.

"You will go to the function to-day, Ralph ?" said Mel ville to his friend the same morning.

"Not I! God bless my soul! when a man has graduated at Edinburgh and Cambridge, he can afford to dispense with a twopenny-halfpenny function at Burlington House."

"I thought you admitted that, even in comparison with Cambridge and Edinburgh, London had its points?"

"So I do. But the graduation ceremony is not one of them. Ceremonial does not sprout kindly on nineteenthcentury soil. One misses the tradition, the aroma of faith, the grand roll of the In nomine Patris. Call it superstition, humbug, what you will, but materialism is confoundedly inartistic."

"Spoken like a book with pictures. But without entering fully into the question of Atheism versus Christianity, the point at issue is briefly this: I have got a ticket for the affair, for the first time in my life, and I want to applaud somebody I know. Sweet girl-graduates are all very well, but I decline to waste all my adolescent enthusiasm on a physiologist in petticoats."

"By the way, a woman did get the Physiology Medal, did not she?" And Dudley felt a faint, awakening curiosity to see that other Miss Maclean.

"Oh, if it is going to make you sigh like that," said Melville, "I withdraw all I have said. I have no wish to sacrifice you on the altar of friendship."

"Did I sigh?" said Ralph very wearily. "It was not for that. Oh yes, dear boy, I'll go. It won't be the first time I have made a fool of myself for your sake."

And he did feel himself very much of a fool when, a few hours later, he went up on the platform of the crowded theatre to receive the pretty golden toy. The experience reminded him of his brilliant schoolboy days, and he half expected some kindly old gentleman to clap him on the shoulder as he went back to his seat. He was thankful to escape into insignificance again; and then, adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles, he proceeded to watch for Miss Mona Maclean.

It was well that he had ceased to be the centre of attrac

tion in the theatre. Ralph was not a blushing man, but a moment later his face became as red as the cushioned seats of the hall, and when the wave of colour passed away, it left him ashy pale. At the first sight of that dear familiar face, beautiful to-day with excitement, as he had seen it at Castle Maclean, his hard, aggrieved feeling against her vanished, and he thought only how good it would be to speak to her again. He was proud of her beauty, proud of the ovation she received, proud of his love for her.

But while the tedious ceremony went on, the facts of the case came back to him one by one, like common objects that have been blotted for the moment out of view by some dazzling light. His face settled into a heavy frown.

"I will walk along Regent Street with her," he thought, "and ask her what it all meant."

At last the "function" was over. Mona seemed to be surrounded by congratulating friends, and so indeed was he; but before many minutes had passed he found himself following her out of the hall,-gaining on her. She was very pale. Was it reaction after the excitement of the ceremony?

or did she know that he was behind her?

In another moment he would have spoken, but during that moment a bluff, elderly professor, who had been looking at Mona with much interest and perplexity, suddenly seized her hand.

“Why, I declare it is Yum-Yum!" he exclaimed enthusiastically. "No wonder she took us by surprise on a deserted coast, when she wins an ovation like this at Burlington House!"

Mona stopped to speak, and Dudley passed on.

No wonder, indeed! What a blind bat, what an utter imbecile, he had been! and how he had babbled to her of his past, present, and future, while she had sat looking at him, with infinite simplicity and frankness in her honest eyes!

His lip curled with a cynical smile.

"Bravo, old chap!" said Melville's friendly voice. "It