These two lived in the lap of wealth. The whole flat was alive with gorgeous, soft-stepping flunkeys, whose plush breeches took the doorways with beauty. Mrs Dando herself, for all her bulk, had been caked with diamonds. Yet, I believe, the enormous residuum of that wealth, when the price of its ostentation was deducted, was devoted almost exclusively to good works. Which of us, humbler endowed, could make the same boast relatively? Certainly I had no reason to criticise a display, whose moral, as it affected me alone, was all of a delicate helpfulness and generosity. Johnny and I sat up pretty late together, discussing my affairs; and when I left my friend, to return to the modest quarters where I had left Geoletti awaiting me, it was only to breach, by a little interval of sleep, the business on whose full tide his wealth, and help, and devotion were to launch me. At eleven o’clock on the following morning I went to my appointment, accompanied by the Italian. Mr Shapter’s offices were in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and it gave me my first real inkling, perhaps, of the worldly consequence of my little half-condescended-to old schoolfellow, when I observed with what deference, and with what disregard of the prior claims of lesser waiting clients, he was ushered into the great man’s presence. I am not going to detail the processes of the interview which followed. It would be merely to retread well-trodden ground. My story and Geoletti’s were heard, and balanced, and compared, and the right inferences drawn from them, with an insight and acumen which gave me a high opinion of the qualities upon which great legal reputations are based. The conclusion is the essential thing, and that is related in a line. It was to be Mother Carey first; and, after her, Aosta and Lapluietonnante. CHAPTER XXVI. I REVISIT MOTHER CAREY