“I won’t touch it,” he declared.  “I refuse to mix myself up in the affair at all.  I said more than I meant to last night.”

“But you did say it, Robert.”

“Then I withdraw it now.”

“But you can’t, Robert.  You must go further.  Something has happened to-day, something very serious.”

“Oh?” said Pettifer.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Hazlewood.  “Margaret really has more insight than I credited her with.  They propose to get married.”

Pettifer sat upright in the car.

“You mean Dick and Stella Ballantyne?”

“Yes.”

And for a little while there was silence in the car.  Then Mr. Hazlewood continued to bleat.

“I never suspected anything of the kind.  It places me, Robert, in a very difficult position.”

“I can quite see that,” answered Pettifer with a grim smile.  “It’s really the only consoling element in the whole business.  You can’t refuse your consent without looking a fool and you can’t give it while you are in any doubt as to Mrs. Ballantyne’s innocence.”

Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, quite prepared to accept that definition of his position.

“You don’t exhaust the possibilities, Robert,” he said.  “I can quite well refuse my consent and publicly refuse it if there are reasonable grounds for believing that there was in that trial a grave miscarriage of justice.”

Mr. Pettifer looked sharply at his companion.  The voice no less than the words fixed his attention.  This was not the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday.  The champion had dwindled into a figure of meanness.  Harold Hazlewood would be glad to discover those reasonable grounds; and he would be very much obliged if Robert Pettifer would take upon himself the responsibility of discovering them.

“Yes, I see,” said Pettifer slowly.  He was half inclined to leave Harold Hazlewood to find his way out of his trouble by himself.  It was all his making after all.  But other and wider considerations began to press upon Pettifer.  He forced himself to omit altogether the subject of Hazlewood’s vanities and entanglements.

“Very well.  Give the cuttings to me!  I will read them through and I will let you know my opinion.  Their intention to marry may alter everything—­my point of view as much as yours.”

Mr. Pettifer took the envelope in his hand and got out of the car as soon as Hazlewood had stopped it.

“You have raised no objections to the engagement?” he asked.

“A word to Richard this morning.  Of not much effect I am afraid.”

Mr. Pettifer nodded.

“Right.  I should say nothing to anybody.  You can’t take a decided line against it at present and to snarl would be the worst policy imaginable.  To-day’s Thursday.  We’ll meet on Saturday.  Good-night,” and Robert Pettifer walked away to his own house.

He walked slowly, wondering at the eternal mystery by which this particular man and that individual woman select each other out of the throng.  He owed the greater part of his fortune to the mystery like many another lawyer.  But to-night he would willingly have yielded a good portion of it up if that process of selection could be ordered in a more reasonable way.  Love?  The attraction of Sex?  Yes, no doubt.  But why these two specimens of Sex?  Why Dick and Stella Ballantyne?