d counsel had been
weighed in the balance that sweltering August day.

The prisoner was forgotten almost as soon as he had left the court-room
a free man, but wherever men and women met in Montreal that day, one
name was on the lips of all-Charley Steele! In his speech he had done
two things: he had thrown down every barrier of reserve--or so it
seemed--and had become human and intimate. "I could not have believed
it of him," was the remark on every lip. Of his ability there never had
been a moment's doubt, but it had ever been an uncomfortable ability,
it had tortured foes and made friends anxious. No one had ever seen
him show feeling. If it was a mask, he had worn it with a curious
consistency: it had been with him as a child, at school, at college,
and he had brought it back again to the town where he was born. It had
effectually prevented his being popular, but it had made him--with his
foppishness and his originality--an object of perpetual interest. Few
men had ventured to cross swords with him. He left his fellow-citizens
very much alone. He was uniformly if distantly courteous, and he was
respected in his own profession for his uncommon powers and for an utter
indifference as to whether he had cases in court or not.

Coming from the judge's chambers after the trial he went to his office,
receiving as he passed congratulations more effusively offered than, as
people presently found, his manner warranted.

For he was again the formal, masked Charley Steele, looking calmly
through the interrogative eye-glass. By the time he reached his office,
greetings became more subdued. His prestige had increased immensely in
a few short hours, but he had no more friends than before. Old relations
were soon re-established. The town was proud of his ability as it
had always been, irritated by his manner as it had always been, more
prophetic of his future than it had ever been, and unconsciously
grateful for the fact that he had given them a sensation which would
outlast the summer.

All these things concerned him little. Once the business of the
court-room was over, a thought which had quietly lain in waiting behind
the strenuous occupations of his brain leaped forward to exclude all
others.

As he entered his office he was thinking of that girl's face in the
court-room, with its flush of added beauty which he and his speech had
brought there. "What a perfect loveliness!" he said to himself as he
bathed his face and hands