“Oh, John!”

“As for me, I won’t hanker after your money. But, for your own sake, Margaret—”

“There will be more than enough for me, you know; and, John—”

She was going to make him some promise; to tell him something of her intention towards his son, and to make some tender of assistance to himself; being now in that mind to live on the smallest possible pittance, of which I have before spoken, when he ceased speaking or listening, and hurried her on to the attorney’s chambers.

“Do what you like with it. It is your own,” said he. “And we shall do no good by talking about it any longer out here.”

So at last they made their way up to Mr Slow’s rooms, on the first floor in the old house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and were informed that that gentleman was at home. Would they be pleased to sit down in the waiting-room?

There is, I think, no sadder place in the world than the waiting-room attached to an attorney’s chambers in London. In this instance it was a three-cornered room, which had got itself wedged in between the house which fronted to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and some buildings in a narrow lane that ran at the back of the row. There was no carpet in it, and hardly any need of one, as the greater part of the floor was strewed with bundles of dusty papers. There was a window in it, which looked out from the point of the further angle against the wall of the opposite building. The dreariness of this aspect had been thought to be too much for the minds of those who waited, and therefore the bottom panes had been clouded, so that there was in fact no power of looking out at all. Over the fireplace there was a table of descents and relationship, showing how heirship went; and the table was very complicated, describing not only the heirship of ordinary real and personal property, but also explaining the wonderful difficulties of gavelkind, and other mysteriously traditional laws. But the table was as dirty as it was complicated, and the ordinary waiting reader could make nothing of it. There was a small table in the room, near the window, which was always covered with loose papers; but these loose papers were on this occasion again covered with sheets of parchment, and a pale-faced man, of about thirty, whose beard had never yet attained power to do more than sprout, was sitting at the table, and poring over the parchments. Round the room, on shelves, there was a variety of iron boxes, on which were written the names of Mr Slow’s clients,—of those clients whose property justified them in having special boxes of their own. But these boxes were there, it must be supposed, for temporary purposes,—purposes which might be described as almost permanently temporary,—for those boxes which were allowed to exist in absolute permanence of retirement, were kept in an iron room downstairs, the trap-door into which had yawned upon Miss Mackenzie as she was shown into the waiting-room. There was, however, one such box open, on the middle of the floor, and sundry of the parchments which had been taken from it were lying around it.