boudoir than to a lawyer's office. But
there was in truth very little of what Mr.
Lovegrove called "the shop" about the
furniture or fittings of this tiny sanctum.
The purple carpet was soft and rich, the
walls were stained of a warm stone-colour,
and the two easy chairs—the only seats
which the small size of the room gave
space for—were covered with morocco
leather of the same hue as the carpet.
Over the chimney-piece hung a landscape;
one of the blackest and shiniest that
Wardour-street could turn out. Mr. Frost
called it (and thought it) a Salvator Rosa.

The only technical belongings visible in
the room, were a few carefully selected law
books, on a spare shelf near the window.

"Lovegrove does all the pounce and
parchment business," Mr. Frost was wont
to say, jocosely. "He likes it."

But no client who had ever sat in the
purple morocco easy-chair opposite to Mr.
Frost, failed to discover that, however
much that gentleman might profess to
despise those outward and visible symbols
of his profession which he characterised
generically as pounce and parchment, yet
he was none the less a keen, acute,
practical, hard-headed lawyer.

Mr. Frost looked up from his papers as
Mrs. Lockwood quietly entered the room.

His face wore a look of care, and almost
of premature age; for his portly upright
figure, perfectly dark hair, and vigour of
movement, betokened a man still in the
prime of his strength. But his face was
livid and haggard, and his eyebrows were
surmounted by a complex series of wrinkles,
which drew together in a knot, that gave
him the expression of one continually and
painfully at work in the solution of some
weighty problem.

He rose and shook hands with Mrs.
Lockwood, and then waved her to the
chair opposite to his own.

"Tell me at once," he said, folding his
hands before him on the table and slightly
bending forward as he addressed the widow,
"if your business is really pressing. I
scarcely think there is another person in
London whom I would have admitted at
this moment."

"My business is pressing. And I am
much obliged to you," replied Mrs.
Lockwood, looking at him steadily.

"You think, with your usual incredulity,
that I had no real occupation when your
visit interrupted me. Sometimes, I grant
you, I shut myself in here for a little——
Hah! I was going to say peace!—for a
little quiet, for leisure to think for myself,
instead of hiring out my thinking faculties
to other people. But to-day it was not so.
Look here!"

He pointed to the mass of papers under
his hand (on the announcement of Mrs.
Lockwood's approach he had thrown a
large sheet of blotting-paper over them),
and fluttered them rapidly with his fingers.
"I have been going through these, and was
only half-way when you came."

"Bills?" said Mrs. Lockwood.

"Some bills, and some——Yes; chiefly
bills. But they all need looking at."

As he spoke he thrust them aside with a
careless gesture, which half hid them once
more under the blotting-paper.

Mrs. Lockwood's observant eyes had
perceived that one of them bore the heading
of a fashionable milliner's establishment.

"I am sorry," she said, "to interrupt the
calculation of your wife's bonnet bills; but
I really must intrude my prosaic business
on your notice."

"What a bitter little weed you are,
Zillah!" rejoined Mr. Frost, leaning back in
his chair and regarding her thoughtfully.

"You have no right to say so."

"The best right; for I know you. I
don't complain——"

"Oh! you don't complain!" she echoed,
with a short soft laugh.

"No," he proceeded; "I do not complain
that your tongue is steeped in wormwood
sometimes; for I know that you have not
found life full of honey. Neither have I,
Zillah. If you knew my anxieties, my
sleepless nights, my——But you would not
believe me, even if I had time and inclination
to talk about myself. What is it that
you want with me this morning?"

"I want my money."

"Have you come here to say that?"

"That's the gist of what I have come to
say. I put it crudely, because shortly.
But you and I know very well that that is
always the burden of the tale."

"Do you expect me to take out a pocket-
book full of bank-notes, and hand them to
you across the table, like a man in a play?
But," he added, after a momentary struggle
with his own temper, "it is worse than
useless for us to jangle. You are too
sensible a woman to have come here merely
for the pleasure of dunning me. Tell me
what has induced you to take this step?"

"I desired to speak with you. To the
first note I sent you, asking you to call in
Grower-street, I got no answer——"

"I was engaged day and night at the