But Mr. Stacey easily eluded the burden. “Under your specific instructions as to the facts to which you made affidavit,” he said, coldly. It was perhaps evidence how Floyd-Rosney was beginning to acquire a modicum of prudence under the fierce tuition of circumstance that he avoided a breach with his lawyers. He heartily cursed them in his heart, recollecting the many large fees they had received at his hands, minimizing altogether the arduous work and professional learning that had earned them. He broke off the consultation, which he postponed to a future day, and left them with a stunned realization that these men, whose capacity and experience he had so often tested, were of opinion that he had no defense against the preposterous suit of his wife, that she would receive her decree and be awarded the custody of the child and ample alimony which it would be adjudged he should pay. He set his teeth, gritting them hard when he remembered how these lawyers had sought to induce him to defer filing his bill, to mitigate his allegations, to investigate the circumstances more closely. Their judgment had been justified in every particular, and though showing no triumph--Mr. Stacey was too completely a legal machine for such manifestation--he gave attestation of his human composition by the cold distaste, which he could not disguise, for the subsequent developments. “Damned if _he_ is not ashamed to be concerned with _me_,” Floyd-Rosney said to himself, fairly staggered by the preposterous climax of the situation.