James Norris was a sensualist.  His sensuality was recognizable in the close-set eyes and in the sharp prominent chin (he resembled vaguely the portrait of Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du Mal); he never spoke of his amours, but occasionally he would drop an observation, especially if he were talking to Mike Fletcher, that afforded a sudden glimpse of a soul touched if not tainted with erotism.  But James Norris was above all things prudent, and knew how to keep vice well in hand.

Like another, he had had his love story, or that which in the life of such a man might pass for a love story.  He had flirted a great deal when he was thirty, with a married woman.  She had not troubled, she had only slightly eddied, stirred with a few ripples the placidity of a placid stream of life.  In hours of lassitude it pleased him to think that she had ruined his life.  Man is ever ready to think that his failure comes from without rather than from within.  He wrote to her every week a long letter, and spent a large part of the long vacation in her house in Yorkshire, telling her that he had never loved any one but her.

James Norris was an able lawyer, and he was an able lawyer for three reasons.  First, because he was a clear-headed man of the world, who had not allowed his intelligence to rust;—­it formed part of the routine of his life to read some pages of a standard author before going to bed; he studied all the notorious articles that appeared in the reviews, attempting the assimilation of the ideas which seemed to him best in our time.  Secondly, he was industrious, and if he led an independent life, dining frequently in a tavern instead of touting for briefs in society, and so harmed himself, such misadventure was counterbalanced by his industry and his prudence.  Thirdly, his sweetness and geniality made him a favourite with the bench.  He had much insight into human nature, he studied it, and could detect almost at once the two leading spirits on a jury; and he was always aware of the idiosyncrasies of the judge he was pleading before, and knew how to respect and to flatter them.

Charles Stokes was the oldest man who frequented Hall’s chambers, and his venerable appearance was an anomaly in a company formed principally of men under forty.  In truth, Charles Stokes was not more than forty-six or seven, but he explained that living everywhere, and doing everything, had aged him beyond his years.  In mind, however, he was the youngest there, and his manner was often distressingly juvenile.  He wore old clothes which looked as if they had not been brushed for some weeks, and his linen was of dubious cleanliness, and about his rumpled collar there floated a half-tied black necktie.  Mike, who hated all things that reminded him of the casualness of this human frame, never was at ease in his presence, and his eye turned in disgust from sight of the poor old gentleman’s trembling and ossified fingers.  His beard was long and almost white; he snuffed, and smoked a clay pipe, and sat in the arm-chair which stood in the corner beneath the screen which John Norton had left to Hall.