'If you had been the lady, Augusta, what a nuisance you would have considered the funeral !' 'Funerals are very dreadful,' she answered with a shudder.

'And they might as well have buried her warrior where he fell. If I ever come to grief in the hunting-field, I will make an arrangement beforehand that they carry me straight to the nearest village deadhouse, and leave me there till the end."

CHAPTER XII.

HARCROSS AND VALLORY.

WILLIAM VALLORY, of Harcross and Vallory, was one of the wealthiest attorneys in the city of London. The house had been established for something over a century, and the very name of the firm meant all that was most solid and expensive in legal machinery. The chief clerks at Vallory's-the name of Harcross was nowadays only a fiction, for the last Harcross slept the sleep of respectability in a splendid mausoleum at Kensal Green-the very clerks at Vallory's were full-blown lawyers, whose salaries gave them larger incomes than they could hope to earn by practising on their own account. The appearance of the house was like that of a bank, solemn and strong; with outer offices and inner offices; long passages where the footfall was muffled by kamptulicon; Mr. Vallory's room, spacious and lofty, a magnificent apartment, which might have been built for a board-room; Mr. Weston Vallory's

room; Mr. Smith's room, Mr. Jones's room, Mr. Thompson's room. Weston Vallory attended to common law, and had an outer chamber thronged with anxious clients. Economy of labour had been studied in all the arrangements. In the hall there was a large mahogany tablet inscribed with the names of the heads of the firm and chief clerks, and against every name a sliding label, with the magic word In, or the depressing announcement Out. The whole edifice was pervaded with gutta-percha tubing, and information of the most private character could be conveyed to far-off rooms in a stage whisper. There were humble clients who never got any farther than Mr. Thompson; and indeed to all common clay the head of the house was as invisible as the Mikado of Japan.

In the Bankruptcy Court there was no such power existent as Harcross and Vallory. Commissioners quailed before them, and judges themselves deferred to the Olympian power of William Vallory. The bankrupt-failing for half a million or so, the firm only undertook great cases-who confided himself to Harcross and Vallory was tenderly led through the devious paths of insolvency, and brought forth from the dark valley at last with a

reputation white as the undriven snow. Under the Vallory treatment a man's creditors became the offenders; inasmuch as they did, by a licentious system of credit, lure him to his ruin. Half-a-crown in the pound in the hands of Harcross and Vallory went farther than seven-and-sixpence administered by a meaner house.

They were great in chancery business too, and kept a printing-press perpetually at work upon bills. of complaint or answers. The light of their countenance was as the sunshine to young barristers, and even Queen's counsel bowed down and worshipped them. They never allowed a client to lift his finger, in a legal way, without counsel's opinion. were altogether expensive, famous, and respectable. To have Harcross and Vallory for one's family solicitors was in itself a stamp of respectability.

They

They were reputed to be enormously rich, or rather William Vallory, in whose person the firm now centred, was so reputed. Weston Vallory, his nephew, was a very junior partner, taking a seventh share or so of the profits; a bachelor of about thirty, who rode a good horse, had a trim little villa at Norwood, and lived altogether in the odour of respectability. Not to be respectable would have en

tailed certain banishment from those solemn halls and stony corridors in the Old Jewry.

Stephen Harcross, Augusta Vallory's godfather, had died a wealthy old bachelor, and had left the bulk of his fortune, which was for the chief part in stock and shares of divers kinds, to his goddaughter -having lived at variance with his own flesh and blood, and being considerably impressed by the beauty, accomplishments, and general merits of that young lady. Whereby it came to pass that Miss Vallory, besides having splendid expectations from her father, was already possessor of a clear three thousand per annum. What her father might have to leave was an open question. He lived at the rate of five thousand a year; but was supposed to be making at least eight, and Augusta was his only child.

It was, of course, a wonderful stroke of fortune for such a man as Hubert Walgrave, with three hundred a year and his profession, to become the accepted suitor of Augusta Vallory. The thing had come about simply enough. Her father had taken him by the hand three or four years before; had been pleased with him, and had invited him a good deal to Acropolis - square, and to a villa at Ryde,