ither his love
or the ensuing passion to interfere in any way with his professional
duties or instincts; he was a lawyer, and an embryo Member of
Parliament first, a man afterwards; and it was not until late in the
afternoon of the day which followed his last recorded interview with
Lady Garnett and her niece that he dismissed from his brain the
complexities of "Brown and another _versus_ Johnson," and drew from an
orderly mental pigeon-hole the bundle of papers bearing the neat
endorsement, "_Re_ Miss Masters." When, to the ecstatic joy of his
clerk, he had withdrawn himself from his chambers in Paper
Buildings, and was walking briskly along the dusty Embankment in the
direction of his club, he found himself, by a sequence which was
natural, though he would have been the last to own it, already
thinking of Rainham, and wondering, with a trace of dignified
self-reproach, whether he had not been guilty of some remissness in
the performance of his duty towards society, in the matter of that
reprehensible individual and his aberrations from the paths of
virtue. He did not stop to question himself too strictly as to the
connection between his matrimonial aspirations and Rainham's
peccadilloes; but he was able to assure himself that the assertion
of his principles demanded a closer investigation, a more crucial
analysis of certain ambiguous episodes.

"Supposing," he argued, "supposing Rainham had given signs of a
desire to marry my sister, or my cousin, or any other girl in whom I
was interested, or, in short, whom I knew, it would obviously have
been my duty, before giving my consent or approval, to find out all
about his relations with that girl, that person whom I saw with him
in the park--ah, yes! Kitty, that was her name. And, in a way, don't
I owe far more to society in general than I do to any of my immediate
friends in particular? Well, then I ought to know more about
Kitty, so as to be prepared in case--that is, for emergencies....
Why, for all I know, I may have been suspecting Rainham all this
time quite unjustly. I'm sure I hope so." Here he shook his head
sorrowfully. "But I'm afraid there's not much chance of that. The
question remains, how am I to find out anything? It's no good asking
Rainham; that goes without saying. It would be equally useless to
try Lightmark: they're as thick as thieves, and he's not the sort of
man to be pumped very easily. And yet, if Rainham's friends are out
of the question, what'