"I don't know that you have any right to come to me at all," said he slowly. "I've my own right to decline to deal with you at all in business matters. And you come here on business." Aurora sank back into her chair. "Then what could I do?" she said faintly. "Have you tried Henderson?" "Yes," she said, faintly, and with much reluctance, "I did." "Why, if you wanted me?" "I can't tell you that. But I did. He refused to have anything to do with the defense for my boy." "Very naturally--very naturally. Didn't you know he would before you went to ask him? Couldn't you guess that?--couldn't you have figured out that much for your own self? Didn't you know that man? He's not with the under dog." "It seems not," said Aurora Lane, wearily. "So I came to you." "Even after last night?" "Yes, after last night. At first it was hard to think of it." "Aurora," said he, "I reckon I'm not a very practical sort of man. If I were--if I were a man like Judge Henderson, say, I'd clamp on the screws right now. I'd try to get you to alter what you said to me last night." "It wouldn't be like you. You've never yet--in all our lives--done anything like that." "No? I'm second choice--that's my fate, is it--that's as high as I get? Yes, I reckon that's about a fair estimate of me--I'm a typical second choice man. I suppose I'll have to accept that fact." And now he laughed uproariously, though none too happily. "Well, Aurora," said he after a time, "you have broken in here, anyway--just as I broke down your gate last night in my own clumsiness. Suppose we call it quits. Let's not figure too close on the moving consideration. There's nothing you can give Horace Brooks, attorney at law, in the way of pay. And you need Horace Brooks--_only_ as attorney at law. What can I do for you?' "I don't know, but all that can be done now for him you can do. I've nowhere else to go. It wasn't easy for me to come here, but I'd make any sacrifice for my boy." "Sacrifices are at a discount in a lawyer's office. I don't ask you to reconsider your decision, as to me--as to me as your husband. But speaking of sacrifices, I only point out to you that so far as I'm concerned as a lawyer in this town, I might as well be your husband or your lover as your lawyer of record in this case! Since the trial yesterday, and my walk home with you last night, there'll be plenty who'll think so anyway. I may be held as a man worse than I ever was--and neither of us gain by that." "That may be so," said she, bending her face forward in her hands. "God! What a trial, what a risk, what a peril I am to myself and everyone I meet! I've brought loss, suspicion, wrong on you--you who're noble! And after twenty years----"