The Solicitor-General (I think it was that functionary) was very kind. He was amused by her story, by her youth and good looks, by her fierce determination and her ignorance. It was seldom that he had so genuine a study of human nature before him, and that instinct of human nature which makes our own cause always seem the one that is most just and right. He was moved to advise her to avoid litigation rather from a desire to keep that piquant story for his private gratification, instead of casting it abroad to all the winds, than from any higher motive. And yet he did a great deal for her, telling her who were the solicitors in whose hands she ought to place herself, with a sense that Mrs. Piercey would not be too particular about the means used to secure her success; and suggesting counsel with something of the same idea, and a somewhat malicious amusement and delighted expectation of what would be made of the case by such advocates. He would no more have suggested either the one or the other to Margaret Osborne, than he could have justified himself on moral grounds for recommending them to Mrs. Piercey. Like clients like advisers, he said to himself. He felt that Patty in the witness-box, manipulated by his learned brother, would be a sight for the---- well, not perhaps for the gods, unless it were the gods of the shilling gallery, whom such an advocate would cause to weep over the young widow’s woes--but for the delectation of the observant and cynical spectator. How wicked and wrong this was it is needless to say; and yet in the mingled issues of human concerns it was very kind to Patty, who was not, as he divined, particular about the modes to be employed in her campaign.