life! It is _detestable_!" and she uttered a
suppressed small shriek on the word, "It has been a hateful, abominable
birthday! Everybody will be laughing at me up their sleeves! Think of
Lady Larford!"

This suggestion was too dreadful for comment, and Mrs. Sorrel closed her
eyes, visibly shuddering.

"Who would have thought it possible!" she moaned drearily, "a
millionaire, with such mad ideas! I _had_ thought him always such a
sensible man! And he seemed to admire you so much! What will he do with
all his money?"

The fair Lucy sighed, sobbed, and swallowed her tears into silence. And
again, like the doubtful refrain of a song in a bad dream, her mother
moaned and murmured--

"What will he do with all his money!"

CHAPTER IV

Two or three days later, Sir Francis Vesey was sitting in his private
office, a musty den encased within the heart of the city, listening, or
trying to listen, to the dull clerical monotone of a clerk's dry voice
detailing the wearisome items of certain legal formulae preliminary to an
impending case. Sir Francis had yawned capaciously once or twice, and
had played absently with a large ink-stained paperknife,--signs that his
mind was wandering somewhat from the point at issue. He was a
conscientious man, but he was getting old, and the disputations of
obstinate or foolish clients were becoming troublesome to him. Moreover,
the case concerning which his clerk was prosing along in the style of a
chapel demagogue engaged in extemporary prayer, was an extremely
uninteresting one, and he thought hazily of his lunch. The hour for that
meal was approaching,--a fact for which he was devoutly thankful. For
after lunch, he gave himself his own release from work for the rest of
the day. He left it all to his subordinates, and to his partner Symonds,
who was some eight or ten years his junior. He glanced at the clock, and
beat a tattoo with his foot on the floor, conscious of his inward
impatience with the reiterated "Whereas the said" and "Witnesseth the
so-and-so," which echoed dully on the otherwise unbroken silence. It was
a warm, sunshiny morning, but the brightness of the outer air was poorly
reflected in the stuffy room, which though comfortably and even
luxuriously furnished, conveyed the usual sense of dismal depression
common to London precincts of the law. Two or three flies buzzed
irritably now and then against the smoke-begrimed windowpanes, and the
clerk's dreary preamble went