asure. I think
it is the first time you have graced my office with your presence."

"How quiet it is here!" she exclaimed, looking around nervously. "It is
hard to believe this is the very centre of the city." Taking the seat
offered to her, she went on:

"Oh, judge, we are dreadfully worried."

"You mean about the Underwood case?"

Alicia nodded.

"Yes, Mr. Jeffries is terribly upset. As if the coming trial and all the
rest of the scandal were not enough. But now we have to face something
even worse, something that affects me even more than my husband. Really,
I'm frantic about it."

"What's happened now?" asked the lawyer calmly.

"That woman is going on the stage, that's all!" she snapped.

"H'm," said the lawyer calmly.

"Just think!" she cried, "the name, 'Mrs. Howard Jeffries'--my
name--paraded before the public! At a time when everything should be
done to keep it out of the papers this woman is going to flaunt herself
on the stage!"

She fanned herself indignantly, while the lawyer rapped his desk
absent-mindedly with a paper cutter. Alicia went on:

"You know I have never met the woman. What is she like? I understand
she's been bothering you to take the case of that worthless husband of
hers. Do you know she had the impertinence to come to our house and ask
Mr. Jeffries to help them? I asked my husband to describe her, but all I
could get from him was that she was impertinent and impossible." She
hesitated a moment, then she added: "Is she as pretty as her pictures in
the paper? You've seen her, of course?"

Judge Brewster frowned.

"Yes," he replied. "She comes here every day regularly. She literally
compels me to see her and refuses to go till I've told her I haven't
changed my decision about taking her case."

"What insolence!" exclaimed Alicia. "I should think that you would have
her put out of the office."

The lawyer was silent and toyed somewhat nervously with the paper
cutter, as if not quite decided as to what response to make. He coughed
and fussed with the papers on the desk.

"Why don't you have her put out of the office?" she repeated.

The judge looked up. There was an expression in his face that might
have been interpreted as one of annoyance, as if he rather resented this
intrusion into his business affairs, but Mrs. Jeffries, Sr., was too
important a client to quarrel with, so he merely said:

"Frankly, Mrs. Jeffries, if it were not for the fact that Mr. Jeffries
has exac