The ablest of the middle-aged lawyers often hurried over to consult him in difficult cases.  All of them could occasionally listen while he, praiser of a bygone time, recalled the great period of practice when he was the favorite criminal lawyer of the first families, defending their sons against the commonwealth which he always insisted was the greater criminal.  The young men about town knew him and were ready to chat with him on street corners—­but never very long at a time.  In his old law offices he could spend part of every day, guiding or guying his nephew Barbee, who had just begun to practice.  But when all his social resources were reckoned, his days contained great voids and his nights were lonelier still.  The society of women remained a necessity of his life; and the only woman in town, always bright, always full of ideas, and always glad to see him (the main difficulty) was Mrs. Conyers.

So that for years now he had been going regularly on Sunday evenings.  He kept up apologies to his conscience regularly also; but it must have become clear that his conscience was not a fire to make him boil; it was merely a few coals to keep him bubbling.

In this acceptance of her at the end of life there was of course mournful evidence of his own deterioration.  During the years between being a young man and being an old one he had so far descended toward her level, that upon renewing acquaintance with her he actually thought that she had improved.

Youth with its white-flaming ideals is the great separator; by middle age most of us have become so shaken down, on life’s rough road, to a certain equality of bearing and forbearing, that miscellaneous comradeship becomes easy and rather comforting; while extremely aged people are as compatible and as miserable as disabled old eagles, grouped with a few inches of each other’s beaks and claws on the sleek perches of a cage.

This evening therefore, as he took his seat and looked across at her, so richly dressed, so youthful, soft, and rosy, he all but thanked heaven out loud that she was at home.

“Madam,” he cried, “you are a wonderful and bewitching old lady”—­it was on the tip of his tongue to say “beldam.”

“I know it,” she replied briskly, “have you been so long in finding it out?”

“It is a fresh discovery every time I come.”

“Then you forget me in the meanwhile.”

“I never forget you unless I am thinking of Miss Isabel.  How is she?”

“Not well.”

“Then I’m not well!  No one is well!  Everybody must suffer if she is suffering.  The universe sympathizes.”

“She is not ill.  She is in trouble.”

“But she must not be in trouble!  She has done nothing to be in trouble about.  Who troubles her?  What troubles her?”

“She will not tell.”

“Ah!” he cried, checking himself gravely and dropping the subject.

She noted the decisive change of tone:  it was not by this direct route that she would be able to enter his confidence.