“Sir,” he added, with deep emotion and a trembling voice, “this money must not be suffered to go out of the family. It must not. It would be sinful--sinful. We look to you to protect the rights of the family.” Leonard laughed. “I fear I have no power to help you in this respect. Good-night. I hope to call upon my great-aunt as she wishes.” He shut the door upon his visitor. He heard his feet going down the stairs. He returned to his empty room. It was no longer empty. The man had peopled it with ghosts, all of whom he had brought with him. There was the old man--young again--staggering under the weight of a double bereavement--wife and best friend in the same day. There was his own grandfather killing himself. Why? The young sailor going out to be drowned; his own father dying young; the returned colonial--the prosperous gentleman who, before going out, had forged his brother’s name. Forged! forged! The word rang in his brain. There was the daughter of the House--deserted by the House, married into such a family as Mr. Galley represented. Were not these ghosts enough to bring into a quiet gentleman’s flat? Yes, he had been brought up in ignorance of these things. He knew nothing of the cause of the old man’s seclusion; not the reason of his grandfather’s early death; not any of those other misfortunes. He had been kept in ignorance of all. And now these things were roughly exploded upon his unsuspecting head. He sat down before the fire; he worked at the “Subject” no more that night. And in his brain there rang still the strange warnings of Constance--that he wanted something of misfortune, such as harassed the rest of the world, in order to bring him down to a level with the men and women around him. “I have got that something,” he said. “Poor relations, family scandals, and humiliations and all. But so far I feel no better.” CHAPTER V A LEARNED PROFESSION In one of the streets lying east of Chancery Lane is a block of buildings, comparatively new, let out as offices. They generally consist of three rooms, but sometimes there are four, five, or even six. The geographical position of the block indicates the character of the occupants: does not every stone in Chancery Lane and her daughters belong to the Law? Sometimes, however, there are exceptions. A few trading companies are established here, for instance; and occasionally one finds written across the door such an announcement as “Mr. George Crediton, Agent.” The clerks and people who passed up and down the stairs every day sometimes asked each other what kind of agency was undertaken in this office. But the clerks had their own affairs to think about. Such a mystery as a business conducted in a quiet office to which no clients ever come is a matter of speculation for a while, but soon ceases to excite any attention. Some twenty years and more had passed since that name had first appeared on the door and since the clerks began to wonder.