"Oh! I can guess, and thank you for nothing. It's that apprentice of Miss Baxter's, the milliner. Now don't deny it. I saw Mr. Pinder looking at her very much the last Sunday he honoured Aenon. The girl with the green gloves. The taste of some men--in dress I mean." "Have it your own way," said Lucy, "you'll find out someday, perhaps." "Oh! Bother Tom Pinder and his lady-loves green gloves as well. However did we get talking of such a trifle! Now, seriously, Lucy, do your father and the other want to fight this case, and can they win if they can fight." "They say so. But what's the use of talking. If ifs and buts were apples and ducks!" "And who knows but they are," said Dorothy, springing to her feet. She kissed Lucy with a bright face. "Don't lose heart, little pale-face. They aren't beaten yet. Tell them not to give in. I say so. Now, good-bye,--you're sure it's green gloves?" "You know I never said so. But good-bye." It is never safe to be certain about anything connected with the law; but the opinion may be hazarded that never in the long years of his tenancy did the office of Mr. Edwin Sykes receive a fairer client than the young lady who was closeted with that sedate professor of the gloomy science not long after the interview just recorded. The young lady did not seem in the least impressed by the sombre volumes of statutes and reports that lined the walls of the room, nor yet by the tape-bound bundles of foolscap, draft, and brief, neatly docketed, that were spread on a table by the lawyer's side, so many pot-eggs, the ribald alleged, to tempt the unwary to lay. Dorothy had accepted the chair Mr. Sykes had handed her, but flicked its horse-hair cushion with a delicate cambric handkerchief before complying with his invitation to be seated. "How very musty everything is," she remarked in explanation. "If I'd walked the length of New Street after sitting on your chair without first dusting it, everyone would have said either that I'd been knocked down by a tramp and robbed on my way from Holmfirth, or been to visit an attorney. There mayn't be much difference in the consequences," she added reflectively, "but I don't want all the world to know my business. You can keep a secret, I suppose, Mr. Sykes?" "It is part of my business," the lawyer answered. "Even from Mrs. Sykes--there is a Mrs. Sykes, I suppose." "Well, yes, as you are good enough to ask, there _is_ a Mrs. Sykes,--and till to-day I thought her the most daring of her sex" he would have liked to add. "Ah! That's a comfort. Now I can tell you everything. You wouldn't think now I'm in great trouble, and I want you to help me out of it, and not a living soul but you must know about it." As Dorothy looked radiantly happy as she made this doleful plaint it may be assumed that Mr. Sykes argued her case was not so desperate as her words.