person; it was simply clad but very expensively--how expensively
it was his business to know. Then he took in the room in which
they sat. Simplicity again, but the simplicity of high art--the
drawing-room of one rich enough to indulge in the final luxury of
a highly cultivated taste, viz.: unostentatious elegance and the
subjection of each carefully chosen ornament to the general
effect.

What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be
reached by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the
nature of the task he offered her? It was a question not new to
him; but one he had never heard answered and was not likely to
hear answered now. But the fact remained that the consent he had
thought dependent upon sympathetic interest could be reached
much more readily by the promise of large emolument,--and he
owned to a feeling of secret disappointment even while he
recognized the value of the discovery.

But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was
of very short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change
in her. The sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he
had never been able to penetrate, had dissipated itself in
something like a tear and she spoke up in that vigorous tone no
one but himself had ever heard, as she said:

"No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not
waste my energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot
himself. He was a speculator, and probably had good reason for
his act. Even his wife acknowledges that he has lately had more
losses than gains."