It was an afternoon in January, soon after the courts had begun to sit again, and Mark was mounting the staircase to his new chambers with a light heart--he had made his _debut_ that day; the burden of the work had fallen on him in the absence of his leader, and he felt that he had acquitted himself with fair success. His father-in-law, too, had happened to be at Westminster, and in a Common Law court that day; and the altered tone of his greeting afterwards showed Mark that he had been favourably impressed by what he had heard while standing for a few minutes in the gangway. And now, Mark thought, he would go back to Mabel at once and tell her how Fortune had begun to smile once more upon him. But when he entered his chambers he found a visitor waiting for him with impatience--it was Colin. Mark was not exactly surprised to find the boy there, for Mr. Langton, judging it well to pad the family skeleton as much as possible, had lately sent him to his son-in-law to be coached for a school scholarship; and, as he was probably aware, he might have chosen a worse tutor. 'What a time you have been!' said Colin. 'It's not your day,' said Mark, 'I can't take you now, old fellow.' 'I know,' said the boy, fidgetting restlessly; 'I didn't come about that--it was something else.' Mark laughed. 'You've been getting into another row, you young rascal,' he said, 'and you want me to get you out of it--isn't that it?' 'No, it isn't,' said Colin. 'I say,' he went on, blurting out the question after the undiplomatic manner of boyhood, 'why have you got Mabel to cut poor old Vincent? I call it a shame!' Mark stopped half-way in taking off his coat. 'It would be no business of yours if I had, you know,' he replied, 'but who told you I had done anything of the sort?' 'Nobody, I can see for myself. Mabel told mother she would rather not come to dinners and things when Vincent was coming, and once she did meet him, and she only just spoke to him. And now, when he's so ill, she won't go near him--he told me himself that it was no use asking her, she would never come! She used to like him before, so it must be all your fault, and I call it a beastly shame, and I don't care what you say!' All of this was quite new to Mark; Mabel had studiously avoided all allusion to Vincent, and it had never occurred to Mark to speculate on the light in which she chose to regard his explanation--that was all over, and he was little enough inclined to revive the subject. He began to be strangely troubled now. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' he said; 'is Holroyd ill? it--it is nothing serious, is it?' For he had seen very little of him lately, his obligation being too deep and too humiliating to make repeated visits at all desirable.