genial and urbane, of sound judgment and independent views, endowed with strong common sense and quick perceptions.  You see, I had the highest opinion of Mr. Tarbell, and have often wished to tell his widow—­alas that I should have to call her so!—­how certain I am that she will succeed in the career she has chosen, and how deeply I grieve that her husband could not have lived to find in her a better adviser than I ever could have been to him.”

Messrs.—­I mean Mrs. and Mr.—­Tarbell and Juddson were just moving into their new offices when Mr. Pope uttered these kind wishes.  He met Mrs. Tarbell on the door-step:  he was standing there, indeed, when she came in.  He was always standing on the door-step:  he carried on most of his business, especially with the politicians, in public.  “I beg that you will use my library on all occasions,” he continued, raising his voice a little.  “If I may say so myself, it is rather comprehensive; in fact, I am very proud of it.  And any assistance which I can give you in any way, my dear madam, will, I need hardly say, be given most heartily.”

Use his library, indeed!  Mrs. Tarbell would have been as likely to go to the Vatican and ask Pope Leo for the loan of a few works contra haereticos.  Why had she and her brother ever come to the Land and Water Company’s building?  The idea of meeting the Honorable Pope every day, of every day beholding his portly figure, statesman-like features, and lion mane, and acknowledging his bland bows and salutations, was inexpressibly odious.  And, what was worse, Mr. Pope continued to flourish like a green bay-tree, or like the proprietors of a patent medicine or a blackguard newspaper, or any other comparison you please.  Feet tramped along the hall, hands knocked at his door, lips innumerable whispered into his ears, and Mrs. Tarbell sat and looked at her sign, wondering what had become of all the women who were to have employed her.  She had not said, “Walk in, madam,” to one of them; and Mr. Juddson’s clients all regarded her as if she were a curiosity.

Mrs. Tarbell looked, in fact, like the president of a Dorcas society or a visitor of a church hospital.  She had pleasing features, dark hair, slightly touched with gray, as became a lawyer of thirty-five, and dignified manners.  She dressed very plainly in a black dress with just one row of broad trimming down the front, and, though she felt that it was an abuse of authority, she drew her hair straight back from her forehead.  This question of her hair had given her some little anxiety, and it had cost her some time to decide what kind of hat or bonnet she should wear.  Alexander said she might use her riding-hat for the sake of economy, but she had decided on a tweed walking-hat, which could be taken off very quickly in the court-room.  For, whatever she might do in church, it was now impossible for her to remain covered before the bench of judges.