"Declines to do business with any one but
yourself."

"Oh, very well, then you may tell her that
I'm coming down directly."

"Upon my word," remarked Mr. Lethwaite,
as the door closed, " I think that's pretty well
for a philosopher. Mysterious ladies coming
here, and insisting on seeing Mr. Vampi, and
quite sure that nooody else will do."

The philosopher smiled. " Ah, it's all innocent
enough, poor thing," he said.

They descended the stairs together, and Lethwaite
passed out at the private door, Cornelius
impressing upon him once more as he did so the
necessity of caution.

As Mr. Lethwaite passed the door of the
herbalist's shop on his way home, he saw the
figure of a lady standing by the counter. But
she was muffled up in a shawl, and closely veiled,
and her back was turned towards him.

CHAPTER IX. NOT TO BE PUT DOWN.

IT was one of Mr Lethwaite's great objects in
life to find some means of pushing his friend
Gilbert, and winning for him the chance, at any
rate, of distinguishing himself. Our cynic had
some acquaintances among solicitors, and might,
no doubt, if he had chosen, have got for himself
some experimental briefs from these gentlemen,
who, like a large portion of their fellow-creatures,
are ever ready to help those who are not.
in need of assistance. To secure their good
offices for a friend who was in need of assistance,
was not so easy. And here, it may be remarked,
was a case in which the discovery of a corrupt
instigating motive would have been sufficiently
difficult, if Mr. Lethwaite had set himself the
task of finding one out. Of course, he would have
said that he had been actuated by that love of patronising
which is inherent in the human breast,
but few of his friends would have been found
ready to endorse such an opinion.

It was, then, with a view of giving his friend a
chance, that on a certain day about this time,
our analytical friend thought that he would invite
some of his legal acquaintances to pass the
evening, and that he would ask Gilbert Penmore
to meet them. And this was something of a
piece of self-denial in itself, for these same
lawyers were by no means the companions whom
he would naturally have chosen, unless he had
some special object in view. Be that as it may,
the thing was decided on, and the young gentleman
who held the nearest approach to a
sinecure which is to be had in these severe
times — or in other words, Mr. Lethwaite's clerk —
was despatched in search, first of Mr. Jeffrey,
of Searle-street, and then of Mr. Gregg, of New-square,
and then of Mr. Craft, of Lincoln's Inn-fields,
and finally of Mr. Phipps, of Furnival's.
All these gentlemen were luckily disengaged,
with the exception of Mr. Gregg, who was busy
preparing the defence of a gentleman who had
distinguished himself by an extraordinary power
of imitating the handwritings of capitalists, and
affixing the same to divers cheques drawn in his
own favour.

This case was making quite a sensation in the
profession, and the legal gentlemen assembled
at Mr. Lethwaite's chambers were full of it.

"It's the cleverest thing you ever saw in
your life," said Mr. Craft, as if he were talking
of a work of art, and chuckling as he spoke.
He was a little cheerful man, whom, to look at,
or knowing him only slightly, you would have
thought so good natured that he could be
brought to do anything; but touch him on a
matter of business, and you would find that, still
with the most jovial manner, he could watch
his own interest as well as another. " Here's
one of the cheques, look!"

The other two attorneys pressed eagerly forward
to look. The writing was in so remarkable
a hand that every one felt that it must be
like. Of these other two legal gentlemen, by-the-by,
Mr. Phipps was of a smooth and somewhat
evasive character, and Mr. Jeffrey was
almost entirely speechless, and, having an
asthma, wheezed instead of talked. It was
much less compromising, he found.

"It's a most remarkable circumstance," remarked
the smiling Mr. Phipps, " the proclivity
of some natures towards evil. Now, if this
misguided individual had bestowed half the
labour and thought which he has devoted to the
prosecution of illegitimate studies, on perfecting
himself in some useful art, he might have been
a valuable member of society, and would never
have found himself in his present painful predicament."
Mr. Phipps always spoke in this
elaborate manner, and in an unctuous voice. In
his own opinion, he had made a mistake in early
life in not having adopted the bar as his profession —
wouldn't he have touched the juries up,
he thought to himself, with eloquent phraseology
and flowing periods. However, it was too late
to think or that now, so there was nothing for
it but to bring his phrases to bear upon the
exigencies of private life.

"I suppose the counsel on both sides are retained
already?" remarked Gilbert, ever on the
look-out.

"Ah, I believe you," chuckled the hilarious
but somewhat vulgar Mr. Craft. " First-rate
hands, every one of them, I can tell you."

"I hope he'll get off," remarked Lethwaite,
languidly, between two puffs of cigar-smoke.

"Hope he will!" cried Messrs. Craft and
Phipps, while the other attorney uttered a
wheeze of astonishment.

"Yes I do," retorted the cynic. " There are
always a certain number of people in a great
society who can't stand the routine of ordinary
business life, and who require adventure and excitement
to keep them going. This was probably
one of them. Besides, he only practised on the
purses of commercial people, and you know, as
well as I do, that they are all cheats, quite as bad
as himself — "

"Come, I say," interrupted Mr. Craft, " that
won't quite do; why, you are in the commercial
line yourself, ain't you?"

"And I was just going to say, when you
stopped me, that we, cheat so at our place that