In front of this table sat Mr. Dombrain in a heavy horsehair-covered chair, and near him were two other chairs of slender construction for the use of clients. Along the walls more pigeon holes crammed with papers, a tall bookshelf filled with hard-looking law books, which had a second-hand look of having been picked up cheap, a ragged carpet on the well-worn floor, and dust everywhere. Indeed, so thickly lay the dust on books, on floor, on papers, on desk, that the whole room looked as if it had just been opened after the lapse of years. The chamber of the Sleeping Beauty, perhaps, and Mr. Dombrain--well no, he was not a beauty, and he never was sleeping, so the comparison holds not. Indeed he was a singularly ugly man in a coarse fashion. A large bullet-shaped head covered with rough red hair, cut so remarkably short that it stood up stiffly in a stubbly fashion, a freckled face with a coarse red beard clipped short, cunning little grey eyes, rather bleared by the constant glare of the gaslight in which he worked, and large crimson ears. Dressed in a neat suit of black broadcloth, he appeared singularly ill at ease in it, and with his large stumpy-fingered hands, with clubbed nails, his awkward manner, his habit of stealthily glancing out of his bleared eyes, Mr. Dombrain was about as unsuited a person for a lawyer as one could find. There was nothing suave about him to invite confidence, and he looked as if he would have been more at home working as a navvy than sitting behind this desk, with his large red hands clumsily moving the papers about. Three o'clock in the afternoon it was by Mr. Dombrain's fat-faced silver watch lying on the table in front of him, and as the lawyer noted the fact in his usual stealthy fashion, a timid-looking clerk glided into the room. "Yes?" said Dombrain interrogatively, without looking up. "If you please--if you please, sir, a lady," stammered the timid clerk, washing his hands with invisible soap and water, "a lady about--about the situation, sir." "Humph! I said the application was to be by letter." "But--but the lady, sir?" Mr. Dombrain looked complacently at his nails, but said nothing. "But--but the lady, sir?" repeated the timid clerk again. "I said the application was to be by letter." The clerk, seeing that this was the answer he was expected to deliver, went sliding out of the room; but at the door encountered the lady in question, dressed in black, and closely veiled. "Madam," he stammered, growing red, "the application was to be by letter." "I preferred to come personally." As she spoke, low though her voice was, Mr. Dombrain looked up suddenly with a startled look on his face. "Can you see me, Mr. Dombrain?" He arose slowly to his feet, as if in obedience to some nervous impulse, and with his grey eyes looking straight at the veiled woman, still kept silence. "Can you see me, Mr. Alfred Dombrain?"