f his, and each
time the small cloud, the single spy of serried battalions, had been
slowly creeping up all the while.

He forgot that--he generally did forget unpleasant reminiscences--it
never occurred to him that the cloud might be rising yet again above
the level haze on the sky line, and the hurricane burst upon him once
more.

CHAPTER XLI.

A FINAL VICTORY.

It was an afternoon in January, soon after the courts had begun to sit
again, and Mark was mounting the staircase to his new chambers with a
light heart--he had made his _debut_ that day; the burden of the work
had fallen on him in the absence of his leader, and he felt that he
had acquitted himself with fair success. His father-in-law, too, had
happened to be at Westminster, and in a Common Law court that day; and
the altered tone of his greeting afterwards showed Mark that he had
been favourably impressed by what he had heard while standing for a
few minutes in the gangway. And now, Mark thought, he would go back to
Mabel at once and tell her how Fortune had begun to smile once more
upon him. But when he entered his chambers he found a visitor waiting
for him with impatience--it was Colin. Mark was not exactly surprised
to find the boy there, for Mr. Langton, judging it well to pad the
family skeleton as much as possible, had lately sent him to his
son-in-law to be coached for a school scholarship; and, as he was
probably aware, he might have chosen a worse tutor.

'What a time you have been!' said Colin.

'It's not your day,' said Mark, 'I can't take you now, old fellow.'

'I know,' said the boy, fidgetting restlessly; 'I didn't come about
that--it was something else.'

Mark laughed. 'You've been getting into another row, you young
rascal,' he said, 'and you want me to get you out of it--isn't that
it?'

'No, it isn't,' said Colin. 'I say,' he went on, blurting out the
question after the undiplomatic manner of boyhood, 'why have you got
Mabel to cut poor old Vincent? I call it a shame!'

Mark stopped half-way in taking off his coat. 'It would be no business
of yours if I had, you know,' he replied, 'but who told you I had done
anything of the sort?'

'Nobody, I can see for myself. Mabel told mother she would rather not
come to dinners and things when Vincent was coming, and once she did
meet him, and she only just spoke to him. And now, when he's so ill,
she won't go near him--he told me himself that it was no use asking
her, she wou