Bevington, foremost among the city’s fathers, the leader of the _ton_. When he had last seen his guardian he had thought him of patriarchal age. And was not he himself now nearly as old? In spite of the blithesome aspects of the morning, Jacob Maskelyne turned away from the window with an unwonted weight at his heart and a new wrinkle on his brow. The whole world seemed to be going from him, losing charm and significance in a sort of blurring dissatisfaction, as upon a globe, when swiftly turned, lines of longitude and of latitude, and even continents and seas, vanish from sight, and all because his own life suddenly seemed but vexed nothingness. He had not even mellowed into age as had Bevington. He was as sharp and as rough-edged as an Indian’s flint arrow-head, and he knew it. He seated himself at his table. Automatically he was about to take up the first of several bundles of law-papers, when he was startled by the entrance of the clerk. He leaned back in his chair, and his reawakened wonder grew the more when a card was placed before him upon which was written, in a dashing hand, “From Mr. Bevington.” “A gentleman to see you,” said the clerk. “What does he look like?” asked Mr. Maskelyne, suspiciously. “Nobody I ever saw before,” answered the clerk; “and he seems rather strange about his clothes,” he added, in a rather doubtful, tentative manner. “Let him come in,” said Mr. Maskelyne, after a moment’s pause. [Illustration: [Man]] The door had hardly closed upon the vanishing messenger when it again swung upon its hinges, and a new figure stood in relief against the clearer light from without. In his eagerness to see of what nature a being so introduced might be, Mr. Maskelyne turned his chair completely around, and silently gazed at the new-comer as he entered. His eyes fell upon a slim, graceful young man dressed in the mode of at least forty-five years ago—a mode not without its own good tone undoubtedly, but with a tendency toward gorgeousness which an exquisite of these days of assertive unobtrusiveness might think almost vulgar. His whole attire was touched in every detail with that nameless something which really makes the consummate result unattainable by any not born to such excellence; but in the bright intelligence shining in his dark eyes and the clear intellectual lines of his face, even Maskelyne could see that if he had given much thought to his dress it was only from a proper self-respect, and not because dress was the ultimate or the best expression of what he was. Few could look into the luminous countenance and not feel a glow of sudden sympathy with the high aspirations, the pure disinterestedness, the clear intellect, that lit up and strengthened his features. Even the old lawyer, disciplined as he was by years of hard experience to disregard all such misleading impulses, felt his heart warm toward the young man.