wife. He did not care enough for her for that. Thirty
years--wasted. My heart bleeds when I think of it. Ought I to go down? Did
he wish for me? I wonder--"

His distress as he paced the room was more apparent than ever. Again, his
clients would have been astonished if they had witnessed it. In their
opinion he was hard as nails and a stranger to the softer feelings of the
heart. They would as soon thought of attributing sentiment to one of the
japanned deed-boxes. But they would have accepted the surprising
revelation with well-bred English tolerance for eccentricity, not allowing
it to affect their judgment that Mr. Brimsdown was one of the soundest and
safest lawyers in England.

His agitation arose from the death of Robert Turold--his client. He had
gathered that piece of news from an evening newspaper in the restaurant
where he had dined. Mr. Brimsdown had reached an age when the most
poignant events of human life seem little more than trifles. It was in the
nature of things for men to die. As a lawyer he had prepared many last
wills and testaments--had helped men into their graves, as it
were--unmoved. But that unexpected announcement of Robert Turold's death
had come to him as an over-whelming shock. He had left his meal
unfinished, and returned to his chambers to seek consolation, not in
prayer, but in his collection of old clocks and watches. In the dusk he
had set out his greatest treasures--the gold sun-dial, a lamp clock, an
early French watch in blue enamel, and a bed repeating clock in a velvet
case. But the solace had failed him for once. Even the magic name of Dan
Quare on the jewelled face of the repeater failed to stir his collector's
heart.

His regard for Robert Turold was deep and sincere. His dead client had
been his ideal of a strong man. Strong and unyielding--like a rock. That
was the impression Robert Turold had conveyed at their first interview
many years before, and his patience and tenacity in pursuit of his purpose
had deepened the feeling since. The object of his search had the lawyer's
sympathy. Mr. Brimsdown had a reverence for titles--inherited titles, not
mere knighthoods, or Orders of the British Empire. For those he felt
nothing but contempt. He drew the sharpest distinction between, such
titled vulgarians and those who were born into the world with the blood
running blue in their veins. He regarded Robert Turold as belonging to
this latter class. It was nothing to him that he was