She had her misgivings, which Rupert pooh-poohed, declaring that peace was well purchased at so small a price, and that for such a purpose one lawyer was quite as good as another. "Still, I should like to speak to Archie's solicitor about it," she persisted. "That is what you cannot do, for he is out of town," answered the young man; "and very fortunate that he is, for if you went to him and he went to Forde there would only be another row, and the whole affair perhaps knocked on the head again." "I thought no one could prevent Archie petitioning," she remarked. "Neither can any one," was the reply; "but it might be made confoundedly unpleasant for him after he had petitioned." Which all sounded very well, and was possibly very true, but it failed to satisfy Dolly. Sleep had not for many a long month previously been a constant visitor at Homewood, and whenever Mrs. Mortomley awoke, which she did twenty times through that night, the vexed question of Mr. Benning's interposition recurred to her. Look at it in whatever light she would, her mind misgave her. If it made no difference in the end, if it were no advantage to the Chemical Company, she could not understand the object of so strange a proposal. Rupert had indeed explained the matter by saying, "Forde wanted the thing kept quiet;" but then why should the thing be kept quiet. In whose interests and for whose benefit was it that such secrecy had to be maintained. Pestered as her husband had been with demands for money, with writs, and with sheriff's officers and their men, it seemed to Mrs. Mortomley that all the world must already be acquainted with the position of their affairs. "What can the object be they have in view?" she asked over and over again whilst she lay thinking--thinking through the long dark hours. "How I wish Mr. Leigh were in town?" And then all at once she bethought her that within a walk of Homewood there resided a gentleman with whose family she had some slight acquaintance, and who chanced himself to be a solicitor. This fact had been stamped on Dolly's mind by hearing of the unearthly hours at which even in the dead of winter he was in the habit of breakfasting so as to admit of his reaching his offices, situated somewhere at the west, by nine o'clock. "I will ask him, and be guided by his reply," she decided, and accordingly she rose at cock-crow and, dressing herself in all haste, went across the fields, along the lanes to that sweet residence the lawyer prized so much, and of which he saw so little. She met him at his own gate, and asked permission to walk a little way with him towards the station. "She wanted to ask only one question," she said, "but it was necessary to preface that by a little explanation." In as few words as sufficed for the purpose--and Heaven knows very few suffice to tell a man is ruined--Mrs. Mortomley laid the state of the case before her acquaintance.