‘Leave the case in my hands, Mr. Davoren, and leave me those letters. My clerk shall make copies of them if you like, and return you the original documents. I’ll think the matter over, and, if I find it ripe enough, take counsel’s opinion.’ ‘I should like to see Miss Glenlyne—the lady in whose service Lucille’s mother came to England,’ said Lucius. ‘Would there be any harm in my endeavouring to obtain an interview with her?’ ‘I think not. Old Miss Glenlyne hates the Spalding Glenlynes worse than she hates allopathy. They contrived to offend her in some unpardonable manner while they were courting her brother. She is at Brighton just now. If you would really like to call upon her, I shouldn’t mind giving you a letter of introduction. She and I were always good friends.’ ‘I’ll go down to Brighton to-morrow, and take Lucille with me. She is wonderfully like that portrait of Félicie Dumarques, and it will be strange if Miss Glenlyne fails to see the likeness, unless age has darkened “those that look out of the windows.”’ ‘Miss Glenlyne is as sharp as a needle—a wonderful old lady.’ Mr. Pullman, who had now, as it were, taken Lucius under his wing, wrote a letter of introduction, stating Mr. Davoren’s motive for seeking an interview, addressed his note to Miss Glenlyne, Selbrook-place, and handed it to his new client. And thus they parted, on excellent terms with each other, the lawyer promising to send a clerk to inspect the St. James’s registries that afternoon, in quest of that particular entry which was in a manner the keystone of Lucille’s case. ‘Upon my word, I don’t know why I should be fool enough to take up such a chimerical business,’ Mr. Pullman said to himself, half reproachfully, as he stood upon his hearthrug, and enjoyed the genial warmth of his seacoal fire, after Lucius had left him. But in his heart of hearts Mr. Pullman was pretty well aware that he took up Lucius and Lucille’s case because he detested Joseph Spalding Glenlyne. Lord Lytton has written an admirable chapter upon the value of Hate as a motive power, and it was assuredly Hate that prompted Mr. Pullman to undertake the championship of Lucille. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne had removed the Glenlyne estate from Mr. Pullman’s office. The poetry of retribution would be achieved by the return of the estate to the office without the encumbrance of Spalding Glenlyne. Mr. Pullman polished his spectacles with his oriental handkerchief, and sighed gently to himself as he thought what a nice thing that would be. CHAPTER VII. THE END OF ALL DELUSIONS. Mr. Sivewright received the news of his son’s death like a Roman; yet Lucius felt that beneath this semblance of stoicism there lurked keenest pain. With weak human nature’s inconsistency the old man’s memory now slid back to days long gone, before his son had become a scorpion—when the clever bright-faced child had seemed the one star of hope upon a joyless horizon.