Quickly as his resolution had been taken, he had fully arranged for the details of the task which lay before him. With the notes he had thrust into his pocket a little handful of business papers involving a knotty and delicate point of business, and he intended that the discussion of the point they raised should act as the prelude to the disclosure and the restitution he desired to make. He could not, even in his newfound heroism, and with whatever hysteric hardihood he was prepared to meet the stroke of fate, he could not as yet encounter Brown, and lay bare before him the plot of the melancholy farce he had played an hour ago. But there was an old friend of his, and an old friend of Brown’s into the bargain, a solicitor, keen as a needle and kindly as sunshine, one Barter, whose business chambers were in Gable Inn, and who was of all men the man he could confide in with least shame and best hope of help. He hailed a cab, and bade the driver drive his fastest. Gable Inn lay tranquil, the afternoon shadows already settling deeper on the little quadrangle than on the broad and roaring thoroughfare without. There was no light in the windows of the rooms in which Messrs. Fellowship, Freemantle, and Barter had done business and received their clients fifty years ago, and in which the sole surviving member of the firm still maintained its old-established reputation for honour and astuteness. Bommaney was chilled by the silence and darkness of the rooms, and he shivered to see the temptation he had conquered looming again before him. He knocked loudly with a trembling hand, and the noise of iron on iron went rolling and echoing up the staircase and came back in a hollow, lonely, sounding murmur from the rooms within. His heart sank, and a horrible fear of himself got hold of him. He had actually conquered, and here was the fight to be fought over again with almost a certainty of defeat at the end of it. Indeed, the defeat in that bare moment of time had grown so certain, that he was conscious of a distinct state of disappointment when a sudden footstep within the rooms answered his noisy summons. The door opened, and a young man stood before him, peering at him with half-closed uncertain eyes through the dark. He was a young man of the fleshly school, something too stout for his years, very pallid, and more than commonly personable, with a fine broad forehead, fine frank eyes, and features modelled with an engaging regularity. When he recognised his visitor his pale and handsome face glittered with a sudden smile of welcome, teeth and eyes gleaming quite brightly, and the whole face lighting up in the pleasantest and friendliest fashion conceivable. This agreeable expression faded into one of almost mechanical dolor, and the personable young man shook hands with Mr. Bommaney sadly, and sighed as if he suddenly recalled an idea that sighing was a duty.