day. We'll meet on Saturday. Good-night," and Robert
Pettifer walked away to his own house.

He walked slowly, wondering at the eternal mystery by which this
particular man and that individual woman select each other out of the
throng. He owed the greater part of his fortune to the mystery like many
another lawyer. But to-night he would willingly have yielded a good
portion of it up if that process of selection could be ordered in a more
reasonable way. Love? The attraction of Sex? Yes, no doubt. But why these
two specimens of Sex? Why Dick and Stella Ballantyne?

When he reached his house his wife hurried forward to meet him. Already
she had the news. There was an excitement in her face not to be
misunderstood. The futile time-honoured phrase of triumph so ready on the
lips of those who have prophesied evil was trembling upon hers.

"Don't say it, Margaret," said Pettifer very seriously. "We have come to
a pass where light words will lead us astray. Hazlewood has been with me.
I have the reports of the trial here."

Margaret Pettifer put a check upon her tongue and they dined together
almost in complete silence. Pettifer was methodically getting his own
point of view quite clearly established in his mind, so that whatever he
did or advised he might be certain not to swerve from it afterwards. He
weighed his inclinations and his hopes, and when the servants had left
the dining-room and he had lit his cigar he put his case before his wife.

"Listen, Margaret! You know your brother. He is always in extremes. He
swings from one to the other. He is terrified now lest this marriage
should take place."

"No wonder," interposed Mrs. Pettifer.

Pettifer made no comment upon the remark.

"Therefore," he continued, "he is anxious that I should discover in these
reports some solid reason for believing that the verdict which acquitted
Stella Ballantyne was a grave miscarriage of justice. For any such reason
must have weight."

"Of course," said Mrs. Pettifer.

"And will justify him--this is his chief consideration--in withholding
publicly his consent."

"I see."

Only a week ago Dick himself had observed that sentimental
philosophers had a knack of breaking their heads against their own
theories. The words had been justified sooner than she had expected.
Mrs. Pettifer was not surprised at Harold Hazlewood's swift change any
more than her husband had been. Harold, to her thinking, was a
sentimentalist and sentimentali