He described the dinner given by Edbury at a celebrated City tavern where my father and this so-called Dauphin were brought together.  ’Dinner to-night,’ he nodded, as he limped away on his blissful visit of ceremony to sprightly Chassediane (a bouquet had gone in advance):  he left me stupefied.  The sense of ridicule enveloped me in suffocating folds, howling sentences of the squire’s Boeotian burlesque by fits.  I felt that I could not but take the world’s part against the man who allowed himself to be made preposterous externally, when I knew him to be staking his frail chances and my fortune with such rashness.  It was unpardonable for one in his position to incur ridicule.  Nothing but a sense of duty kept me from rushing out of London, and I might have indulged the impulse advantageously.  Delay threw me into the clutches of Lady Kane herself, on whom I looked with as composed a visage as I could command, while she leaned out of her carriage chattering at me, and sometimes over my head to passing gentlemen.

She wanted me to take a seat beside her, she had so much to say.  Was there not some funny story abroad of a Pretender to the Throne of France? she asked, wrinkling her crow’sfeet eyelids to peer at me, and wished to have the particulars.  I had none to offer.  ‘Ah! well,’ said she; ’you stay in London?  Come and see me.  I’m sure you ’re sensible.  You and I can put our heads together.  He’s too often in Courtenay Square, and he’s ten years too young for that, still.  He ought to have good advice.  Tell me, how can a woman who can’t guide herself help a man?—­and the most difficult man alive!  I’m sure you understand me.  I can’t drive out in the afternoon for them.  They make a crush here, and a clatter of tongues! . . .  That’s my private grievance.  But he’s now keeping persons away who have the first social claim . . .  I know they can’t appear.  Don’t look confused; no one accuses you.  Only I do say it ’s getting terribly hot in London for somebody.  Call on me.  Will you?’

She named her hours.  I bowed as soon as I perceived my opportunity.  Her allusions were to Lady Edbury, and to imputed usurpations of my father’s.  I walked down to the Chambers where Temple was reading Law, for a refuge from these annoyances.  I was in love with the modest shadowed life Temple lived, diligently reading, and glancing on the world as through a dusky window, happy to let it run its course while he sharpened his weapons.  A look at Temple’s face told me he had heard quite as much as was known in the West.  Dining-halls of lawyers are not Cistercian; he was able to give me three distinct versions of the story of the Dauphin.  No one could be friendlier.  Indeed Temple now urged me forcibly to prevent my father from spending money and wearing his heart out in vain, by stopping the case in Dettermain and Newson’s hands.  They were respectable lawyers, he said, in a lawyer’s ordinary tone when including such of his species as are not black sheep.  He thought it possible that my father’s personal influence overbore their judgment.  In fact, nothing bound them to refuse to work for him, and he believed that they had submitted their views for his consideration.