Consultation.

No second letter arrived.  But a telegram was received from the lawyer toward the end of the week.

“Expect me to-morrow on business which requires personal consultation.”

That was the message.  In taking the long journey to Cumberland, Mrs. Linley’s legal adviser sacrificed two days of his precious time in London.  Something serious must assuredly have happened.

In the meantime, who was the lawyer?

He was Mr. Sarrazin, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Was he an Englishman or a Frenchman?

He was a curious mixture of both.  His ancestors had been among the persecuted French people who found a refuge in England, when the priest-ridden tyrant, Louis the Fourteenth, revoked the Edict of Nantes.  A British subject by birth, and a thoroughly competent and trustworthy man, Mr. Sarrazin labored under one inveterate delusion; he firmly believed that his original French nature had been completely eradicated, under the influence of our insular climate and our insular customs.  No matter how often the strain of the lively French blood might assert itself, at inconvenient times and under regrettable circumstances, he never recognized this foreign side of his character.  His excellent spirits, his quick sympathies, his bright mutability of mind—­all those qualities, in short, which were most mischievously ready to raise distrust in the mind of English clients, before their sentiment changed for the better under the light of later experience—­were attributed by Mr. Sarrazin to the exhilarating influence of his happy domestic circumstances and his successful professional career.  His essentially English wife; his essentially English children; his whiskers, his politics, his umbrella, his pew at church, his plum pudding, his Times newspaper, all answered for him (he was accustomed to say) as an inbred member of the glorious nation that rejoices in hunting the fox, and believes in innumerable pills.

This excellent man arrived at the cottage, desperately fatigued after his long journey, but in perfect possession of his incomparable temper, nevertheless.

He afforded a proof of this happy state of mind, on sitting down to his supper.  An epicure, if ever there was one yet, he found the solid part of the refreshments offered to him to consist of a chop.  The old French blood curdled at the sight of it—­but the true-born Englishman heroically devoted himself to the national meal.  At the same time the French vivacity discovered a kindred soul in Kitty; Mr. Sarrazin became her intimate friend in five minutes.  He listened to her and talked to her, as if the child had been his client, and fishing from the pier the business which had brought him from London.  To Mrs. Presty’s disgust, he turned up a corner of the table-cloth, when he had finished his chop, and began to conjure so deftly with the spoons and forks that poor little Kitty (often dull, now, under