“Dear me, you need not have been so particular,” he declared cavalierly. “A matter of no importance.” She had magnified it in her fear of him till it loomed great and menacing. She felt cheapened and crestfallen by his manner of receiving the disclosure. Yet he had marked the occurrence, she was sure; he had resented it--though he now flouted it as a trifle. This added to her respect for him, and it riveted the fetters in which he held her. The inauguration of the suit to rip up and annul the ancient foreclosure, the many irritating questions as to whether the lapse of time could be pleaded in bar of the remedy, whether disabilities could be brought forward to affect the operation of the statute of limitations, what line of attack would be pursued by the Ducie brothers, all wrought him almost to a frenzy. He could scarcely endure even canvassing with his lawyers the points of his adversary’s position. Any intimation of the development of possible strength on their part affected him like the discovery of disloyalty in his counsel. More than once the senior of these gentlemen saw fit to explain that this effort to probe the possibilities, to foresee and provide against the maneuvers of the enemy, to weigh the values in their favor, was not the result of conviction, but merely to ascertain the facts in the case. The counsel, in closer conference still, closeted together, canvassed in surprise and disaffection the difficulty of handling their client, and the best method of avoiding rousing from his lair the slumbering lion of his temper. It was a case involving so much opportunity of distinction, of professional display, as well as heavy fees, that they were loath to risk public discomfiture because Mr. Floyd-Rosney was prone to gnash his teeth at a mere inquiry which bore upon one of the many sensitive points with which the case seemed to bristle. He was as prickly as a porcupine, and to stroke him gently required the deftness of a conjurer. At the most unexpected junctures this proclivity of sudden rage, of unaccountable discomfiture broke forth, amazing and harassing the counsel, who, with all their perspicacity, could not perceive, lurking in the background of Floyd-Rosney’s consciousness, the mirage of his wife’s ancient romance, more especially as he himself could not justify its formulation on the horizon.