Winifred grew pale. The name was pretty. She had not heard it before; for the outline of the story Philip had given her did not necessarily include any reference to this woman; and jealousy and suspicion, born of the devil, began to act upon her.

Could it be that Philip was really guilty? Had he destroyed his victim from love of her? Terrible doubts! Winifred had heard from that astute dowager, Lady Sark, quite enough of men's doings to render her suspicious of the whole sex; and does any woman really trust them? We need not ask whether they have any reason to do so; but surely they might be generous. If we add to the general want of truth in man an equally general distrust of her own sex, which sadly prevails with woman, we may, perhaps, excuse Winifred if she trembled in sad doubt of "her Philip, her knight," as she listened to the weighty words and certain tones of Mr Horton.

Her heart sank, indeed, within her as he told her all. She was relieved when she heard that Estelle Martin was no rival, but an old nurse; but the chain of the inductive philosopher was too strong, and her belief almost began to waver as Horton, evidently with a generous desire to spare her, weighed but lightly upon each piece of evidence. Had he not done so, she would have been less convinced. She loved Philip none the less; but her faith wavered a little-too much, indeed, for her strong love.

When the evidence was concluded, Mr Horton began to relate the story of the interview between Lord Wimpole and himself; and then, to his astonishment, Winifred began to revive, and her colour came again.

"You see," concluded the puzzled Mr Horton, as he looked. upon her whom he loved so well," he will not tell me where he was on that night.”

“Then,” said Winifred, "I will tell you: he was with me!" Horton started to his feet.

"With you, Miss Vaughan?" he said with amazement.

"Yes!" she said, calmly. "He came on purpose to tell me all that Mr Edgar Wade had told him; and he spent the time with me, from six in the evening until nearly midnight. Dear Philip!" cried the girl, the mists of doubt beginning to clear

away,

"did I dare to doubt him? Oh ! my love, my love! I will ask his pardon on my bended knees. My own true knight, indeed!"

"Can you tell me this, Winifred?" cried Mr Horton; for if love gave her a right over him, it gave him, too, some right over her. "Can you publish your own?"

"Shame!" she said; "you are dreaming. There is no shame for me or for Philip. Come, lead me quickly to him. Release him; there is no evidence against him. He was with me. I will swear it!"

"Alas!" cried George Horton, beside himself, "you save him by condemning yourself. This is not true. You could

not".

"Could not! Why, I am Philip's wife!"

"Great God!" said Horton. "Have you other witnesses to your meeting?"

"None! not one. Why should we have?”

"Alas! then, he is lost. If he be your husband, your oath is negatived. You may speak the truth; but the law refuses the evidence, either for or against."

Winifred heard this, and heard no more.

Horton's words carried conviction to her, and it was like a death warrant. With a plaintive cry, like that of some weak and sorely wounded. animal, Winifred fell fainting to the floor.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HERE IN HIS CHAMBERS SAT THE MAN OF LAW.".

HIDDEN amongst a mass of buildings, from which the smoke beats down upon the foggy November days, and upon the roofs of which the sun sheds rays which seem to get more hot and wearied from having to pierce through so much fog and dust, is the little fountain which throws up its sparkling sprays in Garden Court, Temple.

How the dry old benchers, spinning their dusty webs in the musty, old, cruel days of Eldon and Scarlett-when, as Sydney Smith said, every possible iniquity was perpetrated in the

name of the law without one lawyer of eminence, except the "gigantic Brougham," ever dreaming that anything was wrong -how these old benchers consented to allow so fresh and so pure a thing as a fountain of water to be near, it is quite impossible for us to say. Their Philistine old heads were occupied in making law as distasteful as it could be, so far as in them lay; in poring over deeds which were only full of deadly traps for future clients; in trying to expound marriage settlements which no poor bride could ever understand; and in dreaming at odd times of the awful troubles they brought upon their own flesh and blood-if a decoction of parchment and pale ink can be so called-by making their own wills. For it is an axiom laid down by a learned Lord Chancellor himself a wondrously proficient legal authority-that no barrister or adept—even if he be as wise as Solomon and as learned as the learned Selden-can make his own will! Wise solicitors, over the walnuts and the wine which they have obtained by the money of their clients, shake their heads, and chuckle over this mystery; and clerks who are picking up "Noy's Maxims," and serving their articles, quote this as one of the profound mysteries and most cherished beauties of the law. But it is not until a man has been thoroughly uneducated of every good and honest principle that he sees the whole beauty of this admirable system. Sometimes a student finds that his conscientiousness is too much for him, grows melancholy, and foregoes the honour of becoming Lord Chancellor; but usually he gets accustomed to his work, and accepts the stale consolation that, if clients were not so selfish, lawyers would not be so bad.

Sometimes-and this was the case with Mr Edgar Wade— he allows himself to be persuaded that law is very beautiful in theory, and that there really is no wrong without a remedy. After such a conclusion, he looks upon the writhings of the victims of delay, false judgments, errors, and cunning contrivances, as an ignorant impatience on the part of the clients. He makes up his mind that what he has to do is simply the best he can, for himself first, and his client afterwards; and he gets on." But, after all, the education the law affords is not beneficial to the conscience. We have had barristers who have offered up an oath that their client was innocent; when it may

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justly be inferred that they knew he was guilty, and merely shut their eyes to the fact. When these gentlemen, after a number of years spent in defending criminals, have themselves. sat on the bench, we have seen them "deeply affected," and betraying" visible emotion," even to shedding tears, when they were forced to condemn a criminal. This must be taken as a proof that the law does not always harden the legal heartindeed, the proof is not necessary-there are always a number of gentlemen at the bar, admirable for their tenderness and Christian virtues; but they are not, as a rule, successful barristers they employ their time as critics, and their merci. ful behaviour and great leniency to novelists and rising authors is too well known and appreciated to be more than referred to in passing.

Edgar Wade was successful as a barrister; for, although he had not “hugged an attorney," he had attracted the notice of the head of a busy firm of solicitors, and did not want for briefs. His chambers on the first floor were reached by a dirty old staircase-all the dirtier then than now, since sweetness and light were matters little recked of in the chambers of the law. The principal room was occupied by the barrister; a dusty and ill-ventilated bedroom, seldom used, lay beyond it; and before it-boarded off from it by old painted panels, cracked, yellow, and worn-was a slip of a chamber, occupied by his clerk, a man of two and twenty, who looked like a dried-up boy of eighteen-whiskeriess, shabby, and badly provided as to shirt collar and complexion, both being equally yellow. This old young gentleman occupied his time chiefly in catching flies and taking in the names of visitors-written by himself, in a legal hand, and on slips of blue paper, neatly cut to size for the purpose. Like all barristers' clerks, he had a great belief in the talent of his master, and looked forward to the time when business should increase so much that he, the clerk, Mr John Scorem, should make some hundreds a-year in clerks' fees, and be able to purchase a little freehold at Peckham or Clapham, with an apple tree, or various apple trees, in the garden. For Mr Scorem was already a clever pomologist, if we may coin such a word; and knew a ribstone, a stone apple, a cat's head, or a Kerry pippin at a distance. He always had an apple in

his pocket, bulging out like a cannon ball, ready to be furtively produced and munched. He smelt of apples like a fruiterer's shop; and sometimes, passing through "the Garden," as he fondly called Covent Garden Market, on his way to the office from Knightsbridge, he would purchase a whole bushel, and store them in the wooden cupboards which some former proprietor of the chambers had fitted up with a tolerable liberality, until they ripened, with a greasy consistence on their coats, which Mr Scorem fondly polished off with his pocket handkerchief. The aroma from this delicious fruit was strongly objected to by Mr Edgar Wade, and was referred to by his clerk as "mysterious," as if it were the scent of some dead bencher.

"It is curious," the guilty Mr Scorem would say, with his pocket nearly bursting with a yellow cat's head. "I often wonder, sir, what it can be. I generally get a whiff of it as I come in fresh of a mornin'."

Then he would open the windows; and as the scent strictly and conscientiously confined itself to the clerk's room, Mr Wade did not trouble himself about it, and passed in to his own sanctum, leaving Mr Scorem to digest the huge lump of apple he had hastily swallowed.

Mr Scorem's greatest pride was to see his master properly "robed," and to dream of the time when he should exchange a stuff gown for the silk. His second was to preside at the Cogers' Hall, or some such august assembly, and there to lead a debate upon the law. He was a Church and State man, hated the Radicals, treated Lord John Russell and Sir Francis Burdett de haut en bas, and spoke with the dignity of a peer of the realm, and the weight of a city councillor. In those days they debated great matters, and the minds of the Cogers were exercised by the question whether it was the duty of a reformed Parliament to abolish the House of Lords, and to depose the sovereign. And to Mr Scorem it was deputed to tear this supposition to rags, and to cast it to the four winds. Scorem -we beg pardon, Mr Scorem; so he was always termed, with scrupulous politeness, by his master-had risen to the height of the occasion, and had determined to call the eloquent Brougham a "tongue-gifted traitor," and Lord John Russell