ten years too young for that, still. He ought to have good advice. Tell
me, how can a woman who can't guide herself help a man?--and the most
difficult man alive! I'm sure you understand me. I can't drive out in
the afternoon for them. They make a crush here, and a clatter of
tongues! . . . That's my private grievance. But he's now keeping
persons away who have the first social claim . . . I know they can't
appear. Don't look confused; no one accuses you. Only I do say it 's
getting terribly hot in London for somebody. Call on me. Will you?'

She named her hours. I bowed as soon as I perceived my opportunity.
Her allusions were to Lady Edbury, and to imputed usurpations of my
father's. I walked down to the Chambers where Temple was reading Law,
for a refuge from these annoyances. I was in love with the modest
shadowed life Temple lived, diligently reading, and glancing on the world
as through a dusky window, happy to let it run its course while he
sharpened his weapons. A look at Temple's face told me he had heard
quite as much as was known in the West. Dining-halls of lawyers are not
Cistercian; he was able to give me three distinct versions of the story
of the Dauphin. No one could be friendlier. Indeed Temple now urged me
forcibly to prevent my father from spending money and wearing his heart
out in vain, by stopping the case in Dettermain and Newson's hands.
They were respectable lawyers, he said, in a lawyer's ordinary tone when
including such of his species as are not black sheep. He thought it
possible that my father's personal influence overbore their judgment.
In fact, nothing bound them to refuse to work for him, and he believed
that they had submitted their views for his consideration.

'I do wish he'd throw it up,' Temple exclaimed. 'It makes him enemies.
And just examining it, you see he could get no earthly good out of it: he
might as well try to scale a perpendicular rock. But when I'm with him,