btle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an
unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled
garments, and the general appearance--taken in at a glance as I
entered--was such as to cause me to thrust my hands into my pockets and
studiously avoid contact with any part of the structure but the floor.
The end of the box opposite the door was closed in by a strong grating
of wire--excepting the lower three feet, which was of wood--and looking
through this, I perceived, behind a second grating, Reuben Hornby,
standing in a similar attitude to my own. He was dressed in his usual
clothes and with his customary neatness, but his face was unshaven and
he wore, suspended from a button-hole, a circular label bearing the
characters "B.31"; and these two changes in his exterior carried with
them a suggestiveness as subtle as it was unpleasant, making me more
than ever regretful that Miss Gibson had insisted on coming.

"It is exceedingly good of you, Dr. Jervis, to come and see me," he said
heartily, making himself heard quite easily, to my surprise, above the
hubbub of the adjoining boxes; "but I didn't expect you here. I was told
I could see my legal advisers in the solicitor's box."

"So you could," I answered. "But I came here by choice because I have
brought Miss Gibson with me." "I am sorry for that," he rejoined, with
evident disapproval; "she oughtn't to have come among these riff-raff."

"I told her so, and that you wouldn't like it, but she insisted."

"I know," said Reuben. "That's the worst of women--they will make a
beastly fuss and sacrifice themselves when nobody wants them to. But I
mustn't be ungrateful; she means it kindly, and she's a deuced good
sort, is Juliet."

"She is indeed," I exclaimed, not a little disgusted at his cool,
unappreciative tone; "a most noble-hearted girl, and her devotion to you
is positively heroic."

The faintest suspicion of a smile appeared on the face seen through the
double grating; on which I felt that I could have pulled his nose with
pleasure--only that a pair of tongs of special construction would have
been required for the purpose.

"Yes," he answered calmly, "we have always been very good friends."

A rejoinder of the most extreme acidity was on my lips. Damn the fellow!
What did he mean by speaking in that supercilious tone of the loveliest
and sweetest woman in the world? But, after all, one cannot trample on a
poor devil locked u