This outbreak of hysterical nonsense—­in itself simply ridiculous—­assumed a serious importance in its effect on Geoffrey.  It associated the direct attainment of his own interests with the gratification of his vengeance on Anne.  Ten thousand a year self-dedicated to him—­and nothing to prevent his putting out his hand and taking it but the woman who had caught him in her trap, the woman up stairs who had fastened herself on him for life!

He put the letter into his pocket.  “Wait till I hear from the lawyer,” he said to himself.  “The easiest way out of it is that way.  And it’s the law.”

He looked impatiently at his watch.  As he put it back again in his pocket there was a ring at the bell.  Was it the lad bringing the luggage?  Yes.  And, with it, the lawyer’s report?  No.  Better than that—­the lawyer himself.

“Come in!” cried Geoffrey, meeting his visitor at the door.

The lawyer entered the dining-room.  The candle-light revealed to view a corpulent, full-lipped, bright-eyed man—­with a strain of negro blood in his yellow face, and with unmistakable traces in his look and manner of walking habitually in the dirtiest professional by-ways of the law.

“I’ve got a little place of my own in your neighborhood,” he said.  “And I thought I would look in myself, Mr. Delamayn, on my way home.”

“Have you seen the witnesses?”

“I have examined them both, Sir.  First, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr. Bishopriggs together.  Next, Mrs. Inchbare and Mr. Bishopriggs separately.”

“Well?”

“Well, Sir, the result is unfavorable, I am sorry to say.”

“What do you mean?”

“Neither the one nor the other of them, Mr. Delamayn, can give the evidence we want.  I have made sure of that.”

“Made sure of that?  You have made an infernal mess of it!  You don’t understand the case!”

The mulatto lawyer smiled.  The rudeness of his client appeared only to amuse him.

“Don’t I?” he said.  “Suppose you tell me where I am wrong about it?  Here it is in outline only.  On the fourteenth of August last your wife was at an inn in Scotland.  A gentleman named Arnold Brinkworth joined her there.  He represented himself to be her husband, and he staid with her till the next morning.  Starting from those facts, the object you have in view is to sue for a Divorce from your wife.  You make Mr. Arnold Brinkworth the co-respondent.  And you produce in evidence the waiter and the landlady of the inn.  Any thing wrong, Sir, so far?”

Nothing wrong.  At one cowardly stroke to cast Anne disgraced on the world, and to set himself free—­there, plainly and truly stated, was the scheme which he had devised, when he had turned back on the way to Fulham to consult Mr. Moy.