It may be remembered that, on discussing the affairs of the firm with her father, Dolly Grey had been accustomed to call this partner "the Devil." It was not that she had thought this partner to be specially devilish, nor was he so. It had ever been Miss Grey's object to have the affairs of the firm managed with an integrity which among lawyers might be called Quixotic. Her father she had dubbed "Reason," and herself "Conscience;" but in calling Mr. Barry "the Devil" she had not intended to signify any defalcation from honesty more than ordinary in lawyers' offices. She did, in fact, like Mr. Barry. He would occasionally come out and dine with her father. He was courteous and respectful, and performed his duties with diligence. He spent nobody's money but his own, and not all of that; nor did he look upon the world as a place to which men were sent that they might play. He was nearly forty years old, was clean, a little bald, and healthy in all his ways. There was nothing of a devil about him, except that his conscience was not peculiarly attentive to abstract honesty and abstract virtue. There must, according to him, be always a little "give and take" in the world; but in the pursuit of his profession he gave a great deal more than he took. He thought himself to be an honest practitioner, and yet in all domestic professional conferences with her father Mr. Barry had always been Miss Grey's "Devil." The possibility of such a request as had been now made had been already discussed between Dolly and her father. Dolly had said that the idea was absurd. Mr. Grey had not seen the absurdity. There had been nothing more common, he had said, than that a young partner should marry an old partner's daughter. "It's not put into the partnership deed?" Dolly had rejoined. But Dolly had never believed that the time would come. Now it had come. Mr. Barry had as yet possessed no more than a fourth of the business. He had come in without any capital, and had been contented with a fourth. He now suggested to Dolly that on their marriage the business should be equally divided. And he had named the house in which they would live. There was a pleasant, genteel residence on the other side of the water, at Putney. Miss Grey had suggested that the business might be divided in a manner that would be less burdensome to Mr. Barry. As for the house, she could not leave her father. Upon the whole, she had thought that it would be better for both of them that they should remain as they were. By that Miss Grey had not intended to signify that Mr. Barry was to remain single, but that he would have to do so in reference to Miss Grey.