Mr. Greatorex sat looking at the fire, and revolving the different points of the dreadful history. Bede resumed. "I was wondering whether the worst of the details could be kept from my mother. They would try her terribly. She only thinks as yet, I find, that he died suddenly." "Because she only knows as much as your telegram said. It will be impossible to keep it from her; the newspapers will be full of it. Three times today has your mother sent down for _The Times_, and I have returned an excuse. There's no help for it, Bede." "Then you shall tell her, sir. I can't. It must be broken to her by degrees. How was it William Ollivera was so late in coming down?" he suddenly resumed. "He only arrived today as I was departing." "William Ollivera was out of town, and did not return until last night. You have said nothing about our cause, Bede." "That's all right. It was taken yesterday afternoon. Kene led in the place of John, and we got the verdict." "Where are John's papers and things?" "His brother and Frank will take charge of them. I have his private letters. I thought it best to come up to you at once, knowing you were in suspense." "A suspense that has been grievous since I read that paragraph this morning, Bede. I have been fit for nothing." Neither was Bede that day. Mr. Greatorex rose to go to his wife's room, there to enter upon his task--just as his son had been entering upon it with him. Bede paced the carpet for a few minutes alone. It was a long room; the furniture not dark and heavy, but light-looking and pleasant to the eye, though comprising all the requisites for a well-appointed dining-room. Bede took a look at himself in the pier-glass, and pushed his hair off his forehead--his sisters used to accuse him of inordinate vanity. And then quitted the room and the house. He was bending his steps to Lincoln's Inn, to the chambers occupied by his cousin. Not many yards had he gone, before someone darted across the street and pounced upon him. "Halloa, Greatorex! What's this, that's up about Ollivera?" It was a Chancery barrister, who had known John Ollivera well. Bede Greatorex explained in a few short words, and hurried off. "I can't stay to tell you more now," he said in apology. "There's a great deal to do and to be thought of, and I hardly know whether our heads are on our shoulders or off. I'm on my way to his chambers to search if there may be any paper, or aught else, that can throw light on it." A hansom passed at the moment, and Bede jumped into it. He might have met fifty questioners, else, and reached his destination after dark. The chambers were on the third floor, and he went up to them. Mr. Ollivera's clerk, a small youth of nineteen, was at his post; and the laundress, who waited on Mr. Ollivera, was there also. The news had brought her up in tears.