But to-day, for the first time in his life, the barrister neglected his work for his own pleasure. That solemn crisis, which for some butterfly creatures comes once or twice in every London season, came to this man for the first time after twenty years of manhood. He was in love, and he was going to ask the woman he loved to be his wife. He was going to ask her to marry him--and he had met her on Dr. Molyneux's staircase--and he had watched her at a dinner-party as she talked to her aunt's guests! He knew her so little, and yet was eager to win her for his wife. "Good Heavens!" exclaims Common Sense, "what a fool the man must be!" And yet for once, dear, simple, straightforward Common Sense is out of her reckoning; for Laurence O'Boyneville knew Cecil Chudleigh better than she was known by her most intimate friends. It was a gift with him, this intuitive knowledge of human character, this rapid perception of human motive; and it was by the possession of this gift, quite as much as by his cool audacity of showy eloquence, that the Irish barrister had made for himself a name and a position. Before a witness had kissed the Book and answered a preliminary question or two, Laurence O'Boyneville knew what manner of man the witness was. Show him the most trumpery photograph that was ever bought for eighteenpence, and he would penetrate the inmost depths of that man's mind whose face was dimly shadowed in the smudgy portrait. It was doubtful if he had ever read Lavater--and yet more doubtful if he had waded through the big volumes of George Combe; and yet he was in his own person an unconscious Lavater, and to him the teaching of the great Combe could have imparted no new wisdom. A man's eyes are not overshadowed by a bumpy ridge for nothing; and to Laurence O'Boyneville had been given in excess that wondrous faculty called perception. He had scrutinised Lady Cecil with eyes that were experienced in the reading of every expression the human countenance is capable of assuming. He knew that she was pure, and true, and generous, and high-minded. A little proud, perhaps, but only just as proud as a good woman has need to be in a bad world. He knew that she was a prize worth winning, and he meant to win her. No apprehension of failure troubled the serenity of his mind. He did not expect to win her all at once. Had it not cost him fifteen years of hard labour to obtain his silk gown? and could he expect that Providence would give him this far higher prize without inflicting on him some interval for the exercise of his patience--some manner of probationary ordeal for the trial of his faith and devotion? Mr. O'Boyneville did not believe in that French proverb which asserts that happiness comes to the sleeper.