"But it's absurd," thought the big red solicitor, "absurd! I'd lay twenty to one against it. A hundred to one!" And, looking at Mollie across the tea-table, he forgot her sister. That afternoon the girl seemed more than ever desirable, just the sort of wife he was looking for. He liked the way she bobbed her dark hair, the cotton frock she was wearing, her strong white hands and arms; he liked being alone with her in this little room with its fumed oak furniture, its red wall-paper, its general air of coziness. He would have liked, very much, to kiss that full red mouth. But more than anything else, he liked this new shyness, this very hopeful shyness, which had replaced her old self-confidence. "What's the matter with you this afternoon, Mollie?" he chaffed her. "Got the hump about anything?" "No. I'm a bit tired; that's all." "Nothing worrying you?" "Nothing much." And again--vaguely--the solicitor in Wilberforce grew nervous. "Damn it all," he thought, "supposing my suspicions _are_ right. Suppose those two have gone off together. It's fifty to one against, but still----" The instinct to gamble on that fifty-to-one chance (it had been a hundred to one half an hour since), to propose and have done with it, came to him. But his caution subdued the instinct. The world, his world, was a pretty censorious place; and if one's father were almost a cert. for his baronetcy, if one were junior partner in a firm so entirely _sans reproche_ with the king's proctor as Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright--well, one just couldn't afford to take even thousand-to-one gambles on one's future wife's social position. The entrance of Betty, a thin golden-haired grass-widow, very much _à la mode_ from her trim feet to her modulated voice, tided over the awkward interview. That night, however, Mollie Fullerford--least sentimental of the modern young--cried herself to sleep. 3 Tears are not fashionable in Pump Court; but that melancholy individual, Benjamin Bunce, very nearly followed Mollie Fullerford's example, when "young Mr. Wilberforce"--anxious only to allay his suspicions--called at Ronnie's chambers next morning. "I'm sure _I_ don't know what to do, sir," wailed Benjamin. "Here's a couple of good briefs come in; and my instructions is not to send anything on to him. No, sir, I'm afraid I can't give you his address. I'm not allowed to give any one his address--except Mr. David Patterson. And that only if Mr. David Patterson asks me for it." "David Patterson!" exclaimed the solicitor. "Yes, sir. Mr. Brunton's--Mr. Hector Brunton's--clerk." "Good God!" said a young man whose ruddy complexion had gone suddenly white. "Good God!" And he walked out of the door, as Benjamin subsequently described it, "as though he'd been lifting the elbow ever since breakfast." 4