ers, abuse and cajolery, were alike powerless to win his consent to
his wife's perpetual proposal that she should be allowed to draw her
dress allowance for some months, or even some weeks ahead. Mr.
Mattingford had a horror of bad debts. He endeavoured to show his wife
that the transaction she proposed was unsound from a business point of
view and reckless from a legal point of view. She had no security to
offer for the repayment of the advance--even if he were in a financial
position to make the advance--and he stoutly declared that he was not.
She might die at any moment, and then he would be left with no means of
redress against her estate because she had no estate. Of course, if she
first insured her life out of her dress allowance and handed the policy
to him it would constitute protection for the repayment of the advance,
in the event of her death, but it was not any real protection in the
event of her continuing to live, for a newly-executed policy had no
surrender value. As his own legal adviser, Mr. Mattingford strongly urged
himself not to consider his wife's proposal, and such was his respect for
the law and for those who had been brought up in a legal atmosphere that
he had no hesitation in accepting the advice.

He was a little man of nearly fifty years, with a very bald head and an
extremely long moustache, which when waxed at the ends made him look as
fierce as a clipped poodle. He knew Mrs. Holymead from his having called
frequently at his chief's house in Princes Gate on business matters, and
he admired her for her good looks, but still more for her good taste in
staying away from her husband's chambers. There were some ladies, the
wives of barristers, who almost haunted their husbands' chambers--a
practice of which Mr. Mattingford strongly disapproved. It seemed to him
an insidious attempt on the part of an insidious sex to force the legal
profession to throw open its doors to women. As a man who lived in the
mouldy atmosphere of precedent, Mr. Mattingford hated the idea of change,
and to him the thought of a lady in wig and gown pleading in the law
courts indicated not merely change but a revolution which might well
usher in the end of the world. So strict was he in keeping the precincts
of the law sacred from the violating tread of women that he never
allowed his wife to set foot in the Middle Temple. Their meetings on
those urgent occasions when Mrs. Mattingford came to town for her dress
allowance