Mr. Bell was a solicitor of the modern type that is so vastly different from the old one. Thirty years ago, when our fathers went to consult the family lawyer, they saw either an elderly gentleman with a shaved upper lip and decorous mutton-chop whiskers, or a young man, also with his lip shaved, and clad in a solemn suit of black. But all that is passed, and Mr. Bell was an excellent specimen of the solicitor of to-day. He wore a neatly waxed moustache, had a magnificent gardenia in his well-cut morning coat, and received Lord Penlyn in a handsomely furnished room that might almost have passed for the library of a gentleman of taste. And, had his client been a few years older, they would probably have known each other well at Oxford, for Mr. Bell himself had been a John's man, and had been well known at the debating rooms. He listened to his client's story, smiling faintly once or twice, at what seemed to his worldly mind, too much remorse for his father's sin on the part of Lord Penlyn, then he said: "I never even knew your father, but I should think the whole affair a simple one, and an ordinary version of the old story." "What old story?" "The story of a person of position---- Forgive me, Lord Penlyn, we are men of the world" (he said "we," though he considered his client as the very reverse of "a man of the world"), "and can speak plainly; the story of a person of position taking up with some woman who was his inferior and flattered by his attentions, amusing himself with her till he grew tired, and then--dropping her." "To starve with her--with his offspring!" "I should imagine not!" Mr. Bell said with an airy cynicism that made him appear hateful to his young client. "No, I should imagine not! The ladies who attach themselves to men of your father's position generally know how to take very good care of themselves. You may depend that this one was either provided for before she agreed to throw in her lot with him, or afterwards." The lawyer's opinion was the same as Philip's, and they both seemed to look upon the affair as a much less serious one than it appeared to him! Were they right, and was he making too much out of this peccadillo of his father's? "And you can tell me nothing further?" he asked the solicitor. "What can I tell you?" the lawyer said. "I never saw the late Lord Penlyn, and scarcely ever heard my father mention him. If you like I will have all the papers relative to him gone through; but it is thirty years ago! If the lady is alive and had wanted anything, she would surely have turned up by now. And I may say the same of the son." "He may not even know the claim he has." "Claim! my lord, what claim? He has no claim on you." "Has he not? Has he not the claim of brotherhood, the claim that my father deserted his mother? I tell you, Mr. Bell, that if I could find that man I would make him the greatest restitution in my power."