age chattering at me, and
sometimes over my head to passing gentlemen.

She wanted me to take a seat beside her, she had so much to say. Was
there not some funny story abroad of a Pretender to the Throne of
France? she asked, wrinkling her crow'sfeet eyelids to peer at me, and
wished to have the particulars. I had none to offer. 'Ah! well,' said
she; 'you stay in London? Come and see me. I'm sure you 're sensible.
You and I can put our heads together. He's too often in Courtenay
Square, and he's ten years too young for that, still. He ought to have
good advice. Tell me, how can a woman who can't guide herself help a
man?--and the most difficult man alive! I'm sure you understand me. I
can't drive out in the afternoon for them. They make a crush here, and
a clatter of tongues! ... That's my private grievance. But he's now
keeping persons away who have the first social claim... I know they
can't appear. Don't look confused; no one accuses you. Only I do say it
's getting terribly hot in London for somebody. Call on me. Will you?'

She named her hours. I bowed as soon as I perceived my opportunity.
Her allusions were to Lady Edbury, and to imputed usurpations of my
father's. I walked down to the Chambers where Temple was reading Law,
for a refuge from these annoyances. I was in love with the modest
shadowed life Temple lived, diligently reading, and glancing on the
world as through a dusky window, happy to let it run its course while
he sharpened his weapons. A look at Temple's face told me he had heard
quite as much as was known in the West. Dining-halls of lawyers are not
Cistercian; he was able to give me three distinct versions of the story
of the Dauphin. No one could be friendlier. Indeed Temple now urged me
forcibly to prevent my father from spending money and wearing his heart
out in vain, by stopping the case in Dettermain and Newson's hands.
They were respectable lawyers, he said, in a lawyer's ordinary tone
when including such of his species as are not black sheep. He thought it
possible that my father's personal influence overbore their judgment. In
fact, nothing bound them to refuse to work for him, and he believed that
they had submitted their views for his consideration.

'I do wish he'd throw it up,' Temple exclaimed. 'It makes him enemies.
And just examining it, you see he could get no earthly good out of it:
he might as well try to scale a perpendicular rock. But when I'm with
him, I'm ready to fancy wh