d! Had he not always been
sufficient to himself, and now, at fifty, was it likely that he should
trust another? He was married, indeed, and had children, but what
time had he for the soft idleness of conjugal felicity? His working
days or term times were occupied from his time of rising to the late
hour at which he went to rest, and even his vacations were more full
of labour than the busiest days of other men. He never quarrelled
with his wife, but he never talked to her;--he never had time to talk,
he was so taken up with speaking. She, poor lady, was not unhappy;
she had all that money could give her, she would probably live to be
a peeress, and she really thought Sir Abraham the best of husbands.

Sir Abraham was a man of wit, and sparkled among the brightest at
the dinner-tables of political grandees: indeed, he always sparkled;
whether in society, in the House of Commons, or the courts of law,
coruscations flew from him; glittering sparkles, as from hot steel,
but no heat; no cold heart was ever cheered by warmth from him, no
unhappy soul ever dropped a portion of its burden at his door.

With him success alone was praiseworthy, and he knew none so
successful as himself. No one had thrust him forward; no powerful
friends had pushed him along on his road to power. No; he was
attorney-general, and would, in all human probability, be lord
chancellor by sheer dint of his own industry and his own talent. Who
else in all the world rose so high with so little help? A premier,
indeed! Who had ever been premier without mighty friends? An
archbishop! Yes, the son or grandson of a great noble, or else,
probably, his tutor. But he, Sir Abraham, had had no mighty lord
at his back; his father had been a country apothecary, his mother a
farmer's daughter. Why should he respect any but himself? And so he
glitters along through the world, the brightest among the bright; and
when his glitter is gone, and he is gathered to his fathers, no eye
will be dim with a tear, no heart will mourn for its lost friend.

"And so, Mr Warden," said Sir Abraham, "all our trouble about this
lawsuit is at an end."

Mr Harding said he hoped so, but he didn't at all understand what Sir
Abraham meant. Sir Abraham, with all his sharpness, could not have
looked into his heart and read his intentions.

"All over. You need trouble yourself no further about it; of course
they must pay the costs, and the absolute expense to you and Dr
G