pulled out his watch and examined it closely. "Not _quite_ the hour yet,"
he repeated, and closed it with a snap. "But Mr. Findlay will see you as
soon as he is disengaged."

With a flourish of his handkerchief he withdrew, shutting the door
behind him.

Juliet sat down on a hard chair covered with green leather, and told her
maid to take another. Her spirits were damped. The sight of Mr. Nicol, as
the clerk was named, often had that effect upon persons who saw him for
the first time; indeed he was found to be a very useful check on
troublesome clients, who arrived full of determination to have their own
way, and were often so cowed by their preliminary interview with Nicol as
to feel it a privilege and a relief subsequently to be bullied by Mr.
Ince, or persuaded by Mr. Findlay into the belief that what they had
previously decided on was the last thing advisable to do.

Mr. Findlay frequently remarked to Mr. Ince, when his partner's easily
roused temper was more highly tried than usual by some imbecile mistake
of the clerk's, that Nicol might have faults as a clerk and as a man, but
that, as a buffer, he was the nearest approach to perfection obtainable
in this world of makeshifts.

To which Mr. Ince would reply with point and fluency that fenders could
be had by the dozen from any shipping warehouse, at a lower cost than one
week's salary of Nicol's would represent, and would be far more efficient
in the office. Still he did not suggest dismissing the man.

Juliet, as she sat and looked round the musty little waiting-room, felt
that here was an end of her dreams of the resplendent family she was to