The clerk said that a gentleman was with Mr. Robinson, but no doubt he would be disengaged presently. He took up her card, and Margaret sat down in the waiting-room, rather glad of the opportunity afforded her of collecting her thoughts, and considering how she could open the subject, for, now that she was actually bound on the errand of asking a guarantee of respectability from the man she had hitherto looked upon simply as the person who sent her money and transacted her business, it seemed rather harder than she had imagined. She had a longer time for preparation than she could have desired. Mr. Robinson, as he afterward informed her, was literally overwhelmed with work. He rose when she entered, set a chair for her, then resumed his own. His manner was nonchalant, even, some might have said, unpolished in its freedom, as he expressed his pleasure at seeing Mrs. Grey, and his hope that nothing unpleasant had brought her so far from home. Mr. Robinson was much commended for his easy natural manners, but on this occasion, as on a few others, an acute observer might have detected something of nervousness underlying his expansive gestures. When he had exhausted his vocabulary, Mrs. Grey spoke. Lifting her veil, she fixed her soft brown eyes on Mr. Robinson's face. "I have come to consult you," she said. "Most happy, I am sure," he replied briskly--"any assistance in my power. It was an unfortunate business. Happily, we secured enough for maintenance." "You allude to my losses, Mr. Robinson. I am, unfortunately, no woman of business, so I have scarcely understood how it comes that my income is so diminished; but I assure you that I have full confidence in your judgment. Perhaps, as I have come, you will be able to explain these matters to me." "And delighted," he answered with some eagerness; "it is one of my peculiar crotchets in business to keep all my clients very conversant with their own affairs. Others act differently, but 'Do unto others,' you know, is one of my chief rules. I live by rule, Mrs. Grey--the highest of all rules, I hope. See here, now," and he laid his hand on a pile of account-books, "this is a case in point. Mrs. Herbert, a widow, large estates, before consulting me scarcely knew what she possessed; now looks regularly over the books, spends an hour here once a month. Danvers, again: young lady about to be married, sent for me to draw up the settlement. 'You know all about me, Mr. Robinson,' she said; 'draw it up as you like.' 'Excuse me, Miss Danvers,' said I. 'I should prefer you to use your own judgment in the matter.' She has done so, and in the course of conversation on the subject has made some very sensible suggestions." Mr. Robinson did not say to how many different interviews the sensible suggestions had given rise; certainly, however, he had been no loser by them. "I could quote hundreds of instances, all tending the same way," he continued.