Mrs. Hammond rose with a quick, pettish air of annoyance. “Upon my word, Laura,” she exclaimed, drawing a little shawl about her comfortable shoulders, “you seem to think more of the house than of the poor fellow himself! Let us go to dinner. It is half-past eight, and more.” CHAPTER XVII. THE LAWYER AT HOME. If Mr. Clode, when he stepped forward to open the door for Lord Dynmore, had any thought beyond that of facilitating his departure—if, for instance, as is just possible, he had set his mind on having a little private talk with the peer—he was disappointed. Lord Dynmore, after what had happened, was in no mood for conversation. As, still muttering and mumbling, he seized his hat from the hall table, he did indeed notice his companion, but it was with the red angry glare of a bull about to charge. The next moment he plunged headlong into his brougham, and roared “Home.” The carriage plunged away into the darkness of the drive, as if it would reach the Park at a leap. But it had barely cleared Mrs. Hammond’s gates, and was still rattling over the stony pavement of the top of the town, when the footman heard his master lower the window and shout “Stop!” The horses were pulled up as suddenly as they had been started, and the man got down and went to the door. “Do you know where Mr. Bonamy the lawyer’s offices are?” Lord Dynmore said curtly. “Yes, my lord.” “Then drive there!” The footman got upon the box again. “What has bitten him now, I wonder?” he grumbled to his companion as he passed on the order. “He is in a fine tantrum in there!” “Who cares?” retorted the coachman, with a coachman’s fine independence. “If old Bonamy is in, there will be a pair of them!” Mr. Bonamy was in. In that particular Lord Dynmore had better luck than he perhaps deserved. Late as it was for business—it was after seven—the gas was still burning in the lawyer’s offices, illuminating the fanlight over the door and the windows of one of the rooms on the ground floor—the right-hand room. The servant jumped down and rapped, and his summons was answered almost immediately by Mr. Bonamy himself, who jerked open the door, and stood holding it ajar, with the air of a man interrupted in the middle of his work, and bent on sending the intruder off with a flea in his ear. Catching sight of the earl’s carriage, however, and the servant murmuring that my lord wished to see him on business, the lawyer stepped forward, his expression changing to one of extreme surprise. The Dynmore business had been hitherto monopolized by the London solicitors to the estate. In cases where a country agent had been necessary they had invariably employed a firm in Birmingham. Neither Mr. Bonamy nor the other Claversham lawyer had ever risen to the dignity of being concerned for Lord Dynmore, nor could Mr. Bonamy recall any occasion in the past on which the great man had crossed the threshold of his office.