All this the lawyer said involuntarily, as it were, the words being put into his mouth. They were false words, and yet they were true. He wanted to cheat and ruin the young man before him, and yet he wanted to serve him. He desired his confidence that he might betray it, and yet he felt disposed to guide and counsel him as if he had been his son. The confusion of his mind was such that it became a kind of exaltation. After all he meant him well--what he would do for him would be the best. It might not be justice--justice was one thing; kindness, friendship, bounty, another--and these last he was ready to give. Thus, in the bewilderment of motives and sentiments that existed in his mind, he came to find himself again, as it were, and to feel that he did really mean well to the boy. “I wish to serve you,” he repeated, with a kind of eagerness. Would not this be to serve him better than by giving to his inexperienced hands a fairy fortune of which he would not know how to make use? These thoughts went vaguely but powerfully through Mr. Brownlow’s mind as he spoke. And the result was that he looked up in the young man’s face with a sense of uprightness which had for some time deserted him. It would be best in every way that there should be confidence between them--best for the youth, who, after all, had he ever so good a case, would probably be quite unaware how to manage it--and best, unquestionably best, for himself, as showing at once what he had to hope or fear. Of this there could be no doubt.