“My dear uncle Christopher!” he exclaimed, “what does this mean? What has happened?” The unhappy man, anxious to take counsel, yet shrinking from confession, groaned in reply. “Has anything happened at home? My aunt? My cousins?” “Worse--worse. It has happened to me.” “Well.... But what has happened? Man, don’t sit groaning there. Lift up your head and tell me what has happened.” “Ruin,” he replied--“social ruin and disgrace. That is all. That is all.” “Then, you are the second member of our truly fortunate family who has been ruined this very day. Perhaps,” Leonard added coldly, “it might be as well if you could let me know what form your ruin has taken.” “Social ruin and disgrace. That is all. I shall never be able to look anyone in the face any more.” “What have you done, then?” “I have done only what I have been doing blamelessly, because no one ever suspected it, for five-and-twenty years. Now it has been found out.” “You have been doing something disgraceful for five-and-twenty years, and now you have been found out. Well, why have you come to me? Is it to get my sympathy for disgracing your name?” “You don’t understand, Leonard.” He lost his temper. “How the devil am I to understand if you won’t explain? You say that you are disgraced----” “Let me tell you all--everything--from the beginning. It came from knocking about London with my brother Fred. He was a devil: he didn’t care what he did. So we ran through our money--it wasn’t much--and Fred went away.” “I have heard why. A most shameful business.” “Truly, yes. I always told him so. Since he came home, however, we have agreed not to mention it.” “Go on. You were left with no money.” “I had just been called. I was engaged. I wanted to get married.” “You rapidly acquired an extensive practice----” “No--no. That is where the deception stepped in. My dear nephew, I never had any practice at all. If any cases had been sent to me I could not have taken them, because, you see, I never opened a law-book in my whole life.” “You--never--opened--a law-book? Then--how----” “I loathed the sight of a law-book. But I was engaged--I wanted to be married--I wanted to live, too, without falling back on your mother.” “Pray go on.” “I knew a man who wanted to get a reputation for an after-dinner speaker. He heard me make one or two burlesque speeches, and he came to me. After a little conversation, we talked business. I wrote him a speech. It succeeded. I wrote him another. That succeeded. He leaped into fame--leaped, so to speak, over my back--oratorical leap-frog--by those two speeches. Then my price ran up. And then I conceived the idea of opening out a new profession. For five-and-twenty years I have pretended to go to chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, and I have gone to an office in Chancery Lane, where, under another name, I have carried on the business of providing speeches for all occasions.”