“Pardon me,” said that lawyer, driven into a corner at last, “but are you consulting me on behalf of the late Squire's executor, Mr. Glynde, or on your own account?” “Oh!” replied Mrs. Agar, drawing herself up with a deprecating little laugh, “I did not intend it to be a consultation at all. I happened to be passing, that was all. You see, Mr. Rigg, Mr. Glynde does not know anything about these matters. Clergymen are so stupid.” “Seems to be afraid,” Mr. Rigg was reflecting behind his pleasant mask, “of the young man coming alive again.” Mrs. Agar was like a child in many ways, more especially in her unbounded belief in her own cunning. She actually imagined herself to be a match for this man, who had been trained in the ways of duplicity all his life. She saw nothing of his mind, and fatuously ignored the fact that from the moment she had entered the room he had begun the interview with a mental hypothesis. “This woman,” he had reflected, “has always hated her step-son. She got him a commission in an Indian regiment for the primary purpose of getting him out of the way while she saved money on her life-interest in the estate for her second son. The secondary purpose was little more than a hope. She hoped for the best. The best has come off, and she is not clever enough to let things take their course.” Every word Mrs. Agar had uttered, every silence, every glance had gone to confirm the lawyer's opinion, and he sat pleasantly beaming on her. He did not jump up and denounce her, for lawyers are scientists. As a doctor in the pursuit of his science does not hesitate to handle foul things, to probe horrid sores, so the lawyer must needs smirch his hands even to the elbow in those moral tumours from whence emanate the thousand and one domestic crimes which will ever remain just outside the pale of the law. And in one as in the other the finer susceptibilities grow dull. The doctor almost forgets the pain he inflicts. The lawyer gradually loses his sense of right and wrong. Mr. Rigg was an honest man--as honesty is understood in the law. He was keenly alive to all the motives of this woman, who, in the law of humanity, was a criminal. He had started from a lawyer's standpoint--_id est_, personal advantage. “To whose advantage?” they ask, and there they assign the action. But Mr. Rigg was also a good lawyer, and therefore he kept his own counsel. “Things must be allowed,” he said, “to take their course. You know, Mrs. Agar, we are proverbially slow in moving, but we are sure.”