wrecked. In short, everything except the law-business of the estate
filtered through Mr. Madgin's hands, and as he did his work cheaply and
well, and put up with her ladyship's ill-temper without a murmur, the
mistress of Deepley Walls could hardly have found anyone who would have
suited her better.

Mr. Solomon Madgin was a little dried-up man, about sixty years old. His
tail-coat and vest of rusty black were of the fashion of twenty years
ago. He wore drab trousers, and shoes tied with bows of black ribbon.
His head, bald on the crown, had an ample fringe of white hair at the
back and sides, and was covered, when he went abroad, with a beaver hat,
very fluffy and much too tall for him, and which, once upon a time, had
probably been nearly as white as his hair, but was now time-worn and
weather-stained to one uniform and consistent drab. Round his neck he
always wore a voluminous cravat of unstarched muslin fastened in front
with an old-fashioned pearl brooch, above which protruded the two spiked
points of a very stiff and pugnacious-looking collar. A strong alpaca
umbrella, unfashionably corpulent, was his constant companion. Mr.
Madgin's whiskers were shaved off in an exact line with the end of his
nose. His eyebrows were very white and bushy, and could serve on
occasion as a screen to the greenish, crafty-looking eyes below them,
which never liked to be peered into too closely. The ordinary expression
of his thin, dried-up face was one of hard, worldly shrewdness; but
there was a lurking bonhommie in his smile which seemed to imply that,
away from business, he might possibly mellow into a boon companion.

Mr. Madgin had to wait a few minutes this morning before Lady
Chillington could receive him. When he was ushered into her sitting-room
he was surprised to find that she and Miss Hope were not alone; that a
plainly-dressed man, who looked almost as old as Mr. Madgin himself, was