"I will serve my seven years' apprenticeship--and my seven years after that, if necessary--but she shall be my wife before I die," thought Laurence. But it may be that Mr. O'Boyneville's fourteen years was only a figurative expression, for he said to himself presently: "If I play my cards well, we may be married in the long vacation: and then I'll take my wife to Ireland, and get a glimpse of the Shannon for the first time these twenty years." Arrived in Dorset Square, Mr. O'Boyneville did not endanger his prospects by any untimely modesty. He told the servant who opened the door that he came by appointment; and when the dowager's own maid emerged from some dusky back-parlour, whence issued that odour of heated iron and singed blanket which attends the getting-up of feminine muslins and laces, he brushed unceremoniously by that prim young person, and made his way up stairs. Fortune favoured him. She seems but a craven-spirited divinity, after all, and always places herself on the side of the audacious. Cecil Chudleigh was sitting at the piano, not playing, but leaning over the keyboard in a thoughtful attitude, with her head resting on one hand while the listless fingers of the other trifled with the leaves of her music-book. She looked up as the door opened, and her face betrayed any thing but pleasure as she recognised her visitor. He had prepared her to expect such an intrusion, but she had not expected him so early, and had engaged an ally in the person of Florence Crawford, who had promised to come to her dearest Cecil directly after breakfast. Unfortunately, Flo's "directly after breakfast" meant any time between ten and two; and as the dowager rarely made her appearance before luncheon, poor Cecil had to encounter the great O'Boyneville alone. But in spite of the special manner in which the popular barrister had announced his coming, Cecil had no suspicion that the visit itself was to be of any special nature. No eccentricity could have surprised her in the wearer of that tight-sleeved frock-coat and those exploded shirt-collars, in which Mr. O'Boyneville exhibited himself for the edification of modern society. His solemn announcement of course only referred to the conventional morning call of the grateful diner-out--the stamped receipt for an agreeable entertainment. Lady Cecil was prepared to be a little bored by the eccentric Irishman's visit, and "there an end." "I wish Flo had been here to talk to him," she thought wearily; "Flo could receive a deputation of aldermen, or a Church-commission, whatever that is."