But here Mr. Hotchkiss quickly slammed it behind him, and hurried away.  The Colonel returned to his office, and sitting down, took a sheet of letter paper bearing the inscription “Starbottle and Stryker, Attorneys and Counsellors,” and wrote the following lines: 

Hooker versus Hotchkiss.

DEAR MADAM,—­Having had a visit from the defendant in
above, we should be pleased to have an interview with you at
2 p.m. to-morrow.  Your obedient servants,

          
                                                                          STARBOTTLE AND STRYKER.

This he sealed and despatched by his trusted servant Jim, and then devoted a few moments to reflection.  It was the custom of the Colonel to act first, and justify the action by reason afterwards.

He knew that Hotchkiss would at once lay the matter before rival counsel.  He knew that they would advise him that Miss Hooker had “no case”—­that she would be non-suited on her own evidence, and he ought not to compromise, but be ready to stand trial.  He believed, however, that Hotchkiss feared that exposure, and although his own instincts had been at first against that remedy, he was now instinctively in favor of it.  He remembered his own power with a jury; his vanity and his chivalry alike approved of this heroic method; he was bound by the prosaic facts—­he had his own theory of the case, which no mere evidence could gainsay.  In fact, Mrs. Hooker’s own words that “he was to tell the story in his own way” actually appeared to him an inspiration and a prophecy.

Perhaps there was something else, due possibly to the lady’s wonderful eyes, of which he had thought much.  Yet it was not her simplicity that affected him solely; on the contrary, it was her apparent intelligent reading of the character of her recreant lover—­and of his own!  Of all the Colonel’s previous “light” or “serious” loves none had ever before flattered him in that way.  And it was this, combined with the respect which he had held for their professional relations, that precluded his having a more familiar knowledge of his client, through serious questioning, or playful gallantry.  I am not sure it was not part of the charm to have a rustic femme incomprise as a client.

Nothing could exceed the respect with which he greeted her as she entered his office the next day.  He even affected not to notice that she had put on her best clothes, and he made no doubt appeared as when she had first attracted the mature yet faithless attentions of Deacon Hotchkiss at church.  A white virginal muslin was belted around her slim figure by a blue ribbon, and her Leghorn hat was drawn around her oval cheek by a bow of the same color.  She had a Southern girl’s narrow feet, encased in white stockings and kid slippers, which were crossed primly before her as she sat in a chair, supporting her arm by her faithful parasol planted firmly on the floor.  A faint odor of southernwood exhaled from her, and, oddly enough, stirred the Colonel with a far-off recollection of a pine-shaded Sunday school on a Georgia hillside and of his first love, aged ten, in a short, starched frock.  Possibly it was the same recollection that revived something of the awkwardness he had felt then.