The barrister shrugged his shoulders. He had no leisure for further argument. His circuit work was very heavy, and his brain was already occupied by the claims and the counterclaims of Snooks _versus_ Jones; of Simpkins against the Mayor and Corporation of Guzzleton (involving knotty questions under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act); an action for nuisance by Tittlebat against The Cesspool-Utilising Association, for allowing their reservoirs to drain into his fishponds; and by a variety of other cases in which sundry crooked and troublesome bits of evidence were, with the aid of his juniors, to be made smooth and straight for the benefit of those provincial litigants and delinquents whose rights, wrongs, interests, and defences had been intrusted to the popular O'Boyneville. Thus, in this, as in all other cases, the claims of business were stronger than the call of marital duty. Cecil had her own way, and spent the long July afternoons alone in the Brunswick-Square drawing-room, while her husband won fame and money abroad, and courted the laughter of hawbucks and clodhoppers in stifling provincial town-halls and courthouses. But before Laurence O'Boyneville departed for his circuit-duties an event occurred which was to exercise an evil influence on Cecil's lonely reveries during those long summer days, those solitary evenings spent in the dim twilight of a dreary chamber. Before winging her way to a Sussex manor-house, in which she was to begin her autumn round of visits, Mrs MacClaverhouse came to take a farewell dinner in Brunswick Square. Some unwonted trepidation, some touch of unusual tenderness in the dowager's manner, impressed Cecil in the first few moments of that lady's arrival; but on asking her aunt if any thing was amiss, any direct reply to her question was artfully evaded by the dowager, who became suddenly interested in the state of Mr. O'Boyneville's health.