“Yes.”  The lawyer sighed and turned from his contemplation of the snow.  He moved across to the stove.  “I’m a bit of a coward, Sally,” he went on, holding out his hands to the warmth.  “The lives of other people are nearly as interesting as they are exasperating.  They seem just as foolishly ordered as we believe our own to be well and truly ordered.  I don’t know who it was said ‘all men are fools,’ or liars, or something, but I guess he was right.  Yes, we’re all fools.  I really don’t know how we manage to get through a day, let alone a lifetime, without absolute disaster.  We spend most of our time abusing Providence for the result of our own shortcomings, when really we ought to be mighty polite and thankful to the blind good fortune that lets us dodge the results of our follies.”

“All of which I suppose has to do with the way Leslie Martin, or Leslie Standing, as he calls himself now, is acting.”

“Well, most of it.”

The man’s eyes had become seriously reflective again.

Sarah Nisson nodded her pretty head.  She leant her ample proportions towards the stove and emulated her husband’s attitude, warming her plump hands.  Her brown eyes were twinkling, and her broad, unlined brow was calmly serene.  Her iron-grey hair was as carefully dressed as though she were still in the twenties, moreover it was utterly untouched by any of the shams so beloved of the modern woman of advancing years.

“The death of his poor wife almost seems to have unhinged him,” she said, with a troubled pucker of her brows.  “But—­but I don’t wonder, I really don’t.  She was the sweetest girl.  Poor soul.  And that bonny wee boy.  But there, I can’t bear to think of it all.  You mustn’t blame him too much, Charles.  I guess you don’t in your heart.  It’s just as his attorney you feel mad about things.  It’s best to remember you were his friend first, and only his adviser, and man of business, after.  The whole thing makes me feel I want to cry.  And that poor girl coming to see you to-day.  The other Nancy, I mean.  I don’t think I’d feel so bad about things if it wasn’t for her.  You know, I like Leslie.  And I was as fond of his wife as I just could be, for all she made a fool of herself when she married that hateful James McDonald, who was no better than a revolutionary.  Thank goodness he died and got out before he could do any harm.  But I do think Leslie and poor Nancy were selfish about her child.  I don’t believe it was so much him as Nancy.  From the moment Leslie came on the scene it was she who kept the poor child at college.  She never even let him see her.  And she’s such a bonny girl, too.  Do you know, I believe Nancy’s death, and even the death of the baby boy, wouldn’t have meant half so much to Leslie if he’d had Nancy’s own girl with him.  She’d have got herself right into his heart with her bonny ways, and her hazel eyes that look like great, big smiling flowers.  Then her hair.  She’s a lovely, lovely child.  I wish she was mine.  I’d like to have her right here always.  Couldn’t you fix it that way?”