She did not present a charming spectacle _en déshabille_, her large, partially bald head deprived of the sheltering, softening cap, her withered neck exposed, the lines of her figure revealed by a dingy old dressing-gown. She gave an exclamation as she saw him; the wide, yellow expanse of her face, with its unwholesome yet undying air, lighted up by the twinkling diamonds on either side of it, looked agitated and alarmed. “My dear boy, thank God it is you! I have been dreaming about you--a terrible dream.” CHAPTER X. Dusty purlieus of the law. TENNYSON. Leopold Leuniger came slouching down Chancery Lane, his hat at the back of his head, a woe-begone air on his expressive face, dejection written in his graceless, characteristic walk, and in the droop of his picturesque head, which was, it must be owned, a little too large for his small, slight figure. He turned up under the archway leading to Lincoln’s Inn, and made his way to New Square, where Reuben’s chambers were situated. Reuben, the clerk told him, was in court, but was expected every minute, and Leo passed into the inner room, which was his cousin’s private sanctum. It was two or three days after the Day of Atonement, and in less than a week he would be back in Cambridge. He paced restlessly to and fro in the little dingy room with its professional litter of books and papers, pausing now and then to look out of window, or to examine the mass of cards, photographs, notes and tickets which adorned the mantelpiece. Leo was by no means free from the tribal foible of inquisitiveness. It was not long before the door burst open, and Reuben rushed in, in his wig and gown. The former decoration imparted a curious air of sageness to his keen face, and brought out more strongly its peculiarities of colour: the clear, dark pallor of the skin, the red lights in the eyes and moustache. “Hullo!” said Leo, still standing by the mantelpiece, his hat tilted back at a very acute angle, his restless fingers busy with the cards on the mantelpiece, “a nice gay time you appear to be having, old man: Jewish Board of Guardians, committee meeting; Anglo-Jewish Association, committee meeting; Bell Lane Free Schools, committee meeting--shall I go on?” Reuben laughed. “You see, it consolidates one’s position both ways to stand well with the Community; and I am a very good Jew at heart, as I have often told you. But if you continue your investigations among my list of engagements you will find a good many meetings of all sorts, which are not communal; not to speak of first nights at the Terpischore and the Thalian.” Leo, abandoning the subject, flung himself into a chair and said: “Ah, by the by, how is Ronaldson?” “Much the same as ever. It may be a long business. The doctors have left off issuing bulletins.” Reuben took the chair opposite his cousin, then said shortly: “You have come to tell me something.” “Yes. I have been having it out with my governor.”