scales against
the eyeglass and the manner. They were his by the grace of God; but
the others, he felt, were his own additions, and of the best. These
sort of investments enabled a man to sleep; they assured one of
completeness of effect. Nevertheless he was a much more acute and
vigorous-minded man than he chose to appear.

He was a solicitor, it is true, and had once been called an attorney
by a client in a rage; but he could afford to smile at that because he
was quite a peculiar sort of solicitor, by no means everybody's
money. Rather, he was a luxury, an appanage of the great. His office,
which he called "Chambers," as if it was an old house in the country,
was in Cork Street; his clients were landed gentry, bankers, peers and
sons of peers. The superior clergy, too: he handled the affairs of a
Bishop of Lukesboro', and those of no less than three Deans and
Chapters. Tall, dark and trenchant, with a strong nose and chin, and
clouded grey eyes, a handsome man with a fine air of arrogant comfort
on him, he stood well, and you could not but see what good clothes he
wore--to my taste, I confess, a little too good. His legs were a
feature, and great play was made by wits with his trousers. He was
said to have two hundred pairs, and to be aiming at three hundred and
sixty-five. Certainly they had an edge, and must have been kept in
order like razors; but the legend that they were stropped after every
day's use is absurd. They used to say that they would cut paper
easily, and every kind of cheese except Parmesan.

He wore an eyeglass, which, with the wry smile made necessary by its
use, had the marked effect of intimidating his clients and driving
them into indiscretions, admissions and intemperate discourse.
Hypnotised by the unknown terrific of which the glitter of the blank
surface, the writhen and antick smile were such formidable symbols,
they thought that he knew all, and provided that he should by telling
it him. To these engines of mastery he had added a third. He practised
laconics, and carried them to the very breaking point. He had in his
time--I repeat the tale--gone without his breakfast for three days
running rather than say that he preferred his egg poached. His wife
had been preoccupied at the time--it had been just before Lancelot was
born, barely a year after marriage--and had not noticed that he left
cup and platter untouched. She was very penitent afterwards, as he had
intended she should be. The egg