"Well, to start at the beginning," Mary said; "my father is a solicitor." "What! not that old rascal, Edmund Grimm!" Hudson exclaimed; "but I beg your pardon, Miss Grimm." "Not at all, don't apologize; he is an old rascal, and that's putting it very mildly. Do you know him then?" "I should think so," the barrister answered. "I have done lots of work for him for which he has never paid me. I have long ago given up all hopes of getting my fees out of him." "I don't think you ever will get them," Mary said quietly. "And how curious it is that you should be his daughter! It seems almost impossible," and he gazed with admiration at her beautiful figure, contrasting it mentally with the shrivelled anatomy of the ugly little lawyer. "And how curious to think that the briefs and other papers he sent you were most probably drawn up by my hand!" Mary remarked. "Is that indeed the case? I should have looked at them with much greater interest had I known that; but there's a knock at the door, it's the supper that's arrived. Excuse me a moment while I go and take it in. You must give me your history afterwards. The first thing is to get everything ready for you; I am sure you must be very hungry." Though Mary had spoken so frankly, there was still something in her manner that made the young man feel that she was really keeping a sharp watch over herself, and that she was bent on carefully preserving the respectful distance that still lay between them. Whenever he tried to approach the sentimental and lead the conversation beyond the line she had mentally fixed, she would turn her eyes on him with a calm look that quite disconcerted him. His usual readiness of tongue was strangely absent when talking with this quiet cold beauty. He was ashamed of himself for his stupidity. He had lost all his impudence and pertinacity. He could make no ground here. The barrister brought the dishes into the rooms, and sported his oak. Mary insisted on being shown where the laundress kept the cloth, knives, plates and so on, and she laid the table for supper with an accustomed hand. The girl was amused at the queer careless arrangements of the establishment. "How funnily you bachelors keep house! Why, you don't seem to know where anything is, what you have got, or what you haven't. Now do you think there is any good in my hunting any more for the salt spoon, Mr. Hudson? Can you tell me if you ever had one?" "I really can't say." She laughed merrily. "Oh dear, how you must get robbed by your servants! Have you got servants, by the way?" Hudson, who had been watching with admiration the unconscious supple grace of the girl as she bustled about the room replied, "Yes, a dirty old woman, a laundress as we call them in the Temple, who comes for an hour every morning and pretends to clean up the place." "How curious! but you should get her to clean your plates better; just look at the dust on this one. Now I wonder where I'm going to find a tea-cloth."