Day after day, therefore, he spent in his office,--as many a new-fledged lawyer has done before him,--waiting with what patience he might for the clients that never came, and reading hard, by way of preparation for the cases that never presented themselves. It was dull and lonely work; yet it did him good service, in giving him time for thought and reflection, and in making him acquainted with his own resources of will, courage, patience, and energy. The only persons who came within the circle of loneliness that surrounded him, were Mrs. Lyte, Cathie, and Dr. Remy. The first showed him much gentle, unobtrusive kindness, chiefly manifesting itself in a motherly oversight of his rooms and prevision of his wants. The second fluttered in and out of his office, like a bird or a butterfly, affording him much amusing, and often opportune, distraction from hard study or sober-hued thought. But neither of these two, for obvious reasons, could give him just the close, helpful friendship, of which he stood in need. Neither did he find it in Dr. Remy. Though he met the physician daily, and often engaged with him in hour-long colloquies upon all sorts of topics, he never felt that he really knew him any better than on the first day of their acquaintance. The doctor's peculiar frankness, which had seemed, at first sight, to promise such facility of intimacy, proved to be really more of the nature of an elastic barrier, yielding everywhere to the slightest pressure, but nowhere completely giving way. Or, it might be still more fitly characterized as a deceitful quagmire, wherein the curious explorer sank indefinitely, but never touched solid bottom.