John, with some sternness, "you cannot believe that I
would oppose you in any possible thing. Your pleasure has been a law to
me. I may have differed with you, but I have never made any difference."

"John! you do not mean to say," she cried, turning pale, "that you are
going to abandon me now?"

"Of course, that is merely a figure of speech," he said. "How could I
abandon you? But it is quite true what that woman says, and I entirely
agree with her and not with you in this respect, that the heir to a
peerage cannot be hid----"

"The heir to a peerage!" she faltered, looking at him astonished.
Gradually a sort of slowly growing light seemed to diffuse itself over
her face. "The heir to a peerage, John! I don't know what you mean."

"Is this not your reason for coming to town?"

"There is nothing--that I know of--about the heir to a peerage. Who is
this heir to a peerage? I don't know what you mean, but you frighten me.
Is that a reason why I should be dragged out of my seclusion and made to
appear in his defence? Oh, no--surely no; if he is _that_, they will let
him off. They will not press it. I shall not be wanted. John, the more
reason that you should stand by me----"

"We are at cross-purposes, Elinor. What has brought you to London? Let
me know on your side and then I shall understand what I have got to
do."

"_That_ has brought me to London." She handed him a piece of paper which
John knew very well the appearance of. He understood it better than she
did, and he was not afraid of it, which she was, but he opened it all
the same with a great deal of surprise. It was a subpoena charging
Elinor Compton to appear and bear testimony--in the case of the _Queen_
versus _Brown_.

"The _Queen_ versus _Brown!_ What have you got to do with such a case?
You, Elinor, of all people in the world! Oh!" he said suddenly as a
light, but a dim one, began to break upon him. It was the case of which
his friend the judge had spoken, and in which he had been offered a
retainer, as a matter of fact, shortly after that talk. He had been
obliged to refuse, his time being already fully taken up, and he had not
looked into the case. But now it began slowly to dawn upon him that the
trial was that of the once absconded manager of a certain joint-stock
company, and that this was precisely the company in which Elinor's money
had been all but invested by her husband. It might be upon that subject
that she had to appear.

"Well," he s