nse of the value of his own time which every
patient who has visited a great doctor, every client who has consulted a
lawyer in large practice, knows so well. "Have you heard the news, sir?"
stammered Mr. Bashwood, shifting his ground in despair, and letting the
uppermost idea in his mind escape him, simply because it was the one
idea in him that was ready to come out.

"Does it concern _me_?" asked Pedgift Senior, mercilessly brief, and
mercilessly straight in coming to the point.

"It concerns a lady, sir--no, not a lady--a young man, I ought to say,
in whom you used to feel some interest. Oh, Mr. Pedgift, sir, what do
you think! Mr. Armadale and Miss Gwilt have gone up to London together
to-day--alone, sir--alone in a carriage reserved for their two selves.
Do you think he's going to marry her? Do you really think, like the rest
of them, he's going to marry her?"

He put the question with a sudden flush in his face and a sudden
energy in his manner. His sense of the value of the lawyer's time,
his conviction of the greatness of the lawyer's condescension, his
constitutional shyness and timidity--all yielded together to his one
overwhelming interest in hearing Mr. Pedgift's answer. He was loud for
the first time in his life in putting the question.

"After my experience of Mr. Armadale," said the lawyer, instantly
hardening in look and manner, "I believe him to be infatuated enough
to marry Miss Gwilt a dozen times over, if Miss Gwilt chose to ask him.
Your news doesn't surprise me in the least, Bashwood. I'm sorry for him.
I can honestly say that, though he _has_ set my advice at defiance.
And I'm more sorry still," he continued, softening again as his mind
reverted to his interview with Neelie under the trees of the park--"I'm
more sorry still for another person who shall be nameless. But what have
I to do with all this? And what on earth is the matter with you?" he
resumed, noticing for the first time the abject misery in Mr. Bashwood's
manner, the blank despair in Mr. Bashwood's face, which his answer
had produced. "Are you ill? Is there something behind the curtain
that you're afraid to bring out? I don't understand it. Have you come
here--here in my private room, in business hours--with nothing to tell
me but that young Armadale has been fool enough to ruin his prospects
for life? Why, I foresaw it all weeks since, and what is more, I as
good as told him so at the last conversation I had with him in the great