’And the assizes are the twenty-eighth.  The judges come into the city on that day.  It will be too late too wait till then.  We must have our defence ready, you know.  Can you say where my friend will find Mrs Arabin?’

Mr Harding began nursing his knee, patting and being very tender to it, as he sat mediating with his head on one side—­meditating not so much as to the nature of his answer as to that of the question.  Could it be necessary that any emissary from a lawyer’s office should be sent after his daughter?  He did not like the idea of his Eleanor being disturbed by questions as to a theft.  Though she had been twice married and had a son who was now nearly a man, still she was his Eleanor.  But if it was necessary on Mr Crawley’s behalf, of course it must be done.  ’Her last address was at Paris, sir; but I think she gone on to Florence.  She has friends there, and she purposes to meet the dean at Venice on his return.’  Then Mr Harding turned to the table and wrote on a card his daughter’s address.

‘I suppose Mrs Arabin must have heard of this affair?’ Said Mr Toogood.

’She had not done so when she last wrote.  I mentioned it to her the other day, before I knew that she had left Paris.  If my letters and her sister’s letters have been sent on to her, she must know by now.’

Then Mr Toogood got up to take his leave.  ’You will excuse me for troubling you, I hope, Mr Harding.’

’Oh, sir, pray do not mention that.  It is no trouble, if one could be of any service.’

’One can always try to be of service.  In these affairs so much is to be done by rummaging about, as I always call it.  There have been many theatrical managers, you know, Mr Harding, who have usually made up the pieces according to the dresses they have happened to have in their wardrobes.’

‘Have there, indeed, now?  I never should have thought of that.’

‘And we lawyers have to do the same thing.’

‘Not with your clothes, Mr Toogood?’

‘Not exactly with our clothes;—­but with our information.’

‘I do not quite understand you, Mr Toogood.’

’In preparing a defence we have to rummage about and get up what we can.  If we can’t find anything that suits us exactly, we are obliged to use what we do find as well as we can.  I remember, when I was a young man, an ostler was to be tried for stealing some oats in the Borough; and he did steal them too, and sold them at a rag-shop regularly.  The evidence against was as plain as a pikestaff.  All I could find out was that on a certain day a horse had trod on a fellow’s foot.  So we put it to the jury whether the man could walk as far as the rag-shop with a bag of oats when he was dead lame;—­and we got him off.’

‘Did you, though,’ said Mr Harding.

‘Yes, we did.’

‘And he was guilty?’

‘He had been regularly at it for months.’

’Dear, dear, dear!  Wouldn’t it have been better to have had him punished for the fault—­gently; so as to warn him of the consequences of such doings?’