Mr. Rolfe looked at the two women a moment, and seemed a little puzzled at their telegraphing each other on such a subject; but he coolly noted down Lady Bassett's reply on a card about the size of a foolscap sheet, and then set himself to write on the same card the other facts he had elicited. While he was doing this very slowly, with great care and pains, the lady was eying him like a zoologist studying some new animal. The simplicity and straightforwardness of his last question won by degrees upon her judgment and reconciled her to her Inquisitor, the more so as he was quiet but intense, and his whole soul in her case. She began to respect his simple straightforwardness, his civility without a grain of gallantry, and his caution in eliciting all the facts before he would advise. After he had written down his synopsis, looking all the time as if his life depended on its correctness, he leaned back, and his ordinary but mobile countenance was transfigured into geniality. “Come,” said he, “grandmamma has pestered you with questions enough; now you retort--ask me anything--speak your mind: these things should be attacked in every form, and sifted with every sieve.” Lady Bassett hesitated a moment, but at last responded to this invitation. “Sir, one thing that discourages me cruelly--my solicitor seems so inferior to Mr. Bassett's. He can think of nothing but objections; and so he does nothing, and lets us be trampled on: it is his being unable to cope with Mr. Bassett's solicitor, Mr. Wheeler, that has led me in my deep distress to trouble you, whom I had not the honor of knowing.” “I understand your ladyship perfectly. Mr. Oldfield is a respectable solicitor, and Wheeler is a sharp country practitioner; and--to use my favorite Americanism--you feel like fighting with a blunt knife against a sharp one.” “That is my feeling, sir, and it drives me almost wild sometimes.”