“John,” he said, opening his door. John was his son and partner, and John came to him, having been summoned by a clerk from another room. “Just shut the door. I’ve had such a scene here;—Lord Fawn and Mr. Greystock almost coming to blows about that horrid woman.”
“The Upper House would have got the worst of it, as it usually does,” said the younger attorney.
“And there is John Eustace cares no more what becomes of the property than if he had nothing to do with it;—absolutely talks of replacing the diamonds out of his own pocket; a man whose personal interest in the estate is by no means equal to her own.”
“He wouldn’t do it, you know,” said Camperdown Junior, who did not know the family.
“It’s just what he would do,” said the father, who did. “There’s nothing they wouldn’t give away when once the idea takes them. Think of that woman having the whole Portray estate, perhaps for the next sixty years—nearly the fee-simple of the property—just because she made eyes to Sir Florian!”
“That’s done and gone, father.”
“And here’s Dove tells us that a necklace can’t be an heirloom, unless it belongs to the Crown.”
“Whatever he says, you’d better take his word for it.”
“I’m not so sure of that. It can’t be. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll go over and see him. We can file a bill in Chancery, I don’t doubt, and prove that the property belongs to the family and must go by the will. But she’ll sell them before we can get the custody of them.”
“Perhaps she has done that already.”
“Greystock says they are at Portray, and I believe they are. She was wearing them in London only in July—a day or two before I saw her as she was leaving town. If anybody like a jeweller had been down at the castle, I should have heard of it. She hasn’t sold ’em yet, but she will.”
“She could do that just the same if they were an heirloom.”
“No, John. I think not. We could have acted much more quickly, and have frightened her.”
“If I were you, father, I’d drop the matter altogether, and let John Eustace replace them if he pleases. We all know that he would never be called on to do anything of the kind. It isn’t our sort of business.”
“Not ten thousand pounds!” said Camperdown Senior, to whom the magnitude of the larceny almost ennobled the otherwise mean duty of catching the thief. Then Mr. Camperdown rose, and slowly walked across the New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, under the low archway, by the entrance to the old court in which Lord Eldon used to sit, to the Old Square, in which the Turtle Dove had built his legal nest on a first floor, close to the old gateway.
Mr. Dove was a gentleman who spent a very great portion of his life in this somewhat gloomy abode of learning. It was not now term time, and most of his brethren were absent from London, recruiting their strength among the Alps, or drinking in vigours for fresh campaigns with the salt sea breezes of Kent and Sussex, or perhaps shooting deer in Scotland, or catching fish in Connemara. But Mr. Dove was a man of iron, who wanted no such recreation. To be absent from his law-books and the black, littered, ink-stained old table on which he was wont to write his opinions, was, to him, to be wretched. The only exercise necessary to him was that of putting on his wig and going into one of the courts that were close to his chambers;—but even that was almost distasteful to him. He preferred sitting in his old armchair, turning over his old books in search of old cases, and producing opinions which he would be prepared to back against all the world of Lincoln’s Inn. He and Mr. Camperdown had known each other intimately for many years, and though the rank of the two men in their profession differed much, they were able to discuss questions of law without any appreciation of that difference among themselves. The one man knew much, and the other little; the one was not only learned, but possessed also of great gifts, while the other was simply an ordinary clearheaded man of business; but they had sympathies in common which made them friends; they were both honest and unwilling to sell their services to dishonest customers; and they equally entertained a deep-rooted contempt for that portion of mankind who thought that property could be managed and protected without the intervention of lawyers. The outside world to them was a world of pretty, laughing, ignorant children; and lawyers were the parents, guardians, pastors, and masters by whom the children should be protected from the evils incident to their childishness.
“Yes, sir; he’s here,” said the Turtle Dove’s clerk. “He is talking of going away, but he won’t go. He’s told me I can have a week, but I don’t know that I like to leave him. Mrs. Dove and the children are down at Ramsgate, and he’s here all night. He hadn’t been out for so long that when he wanted to go as far as the Temple yesterday, we couldn’t find his hat.” Then the clerk opened the door, and ushered Mr. Camperdown into the room. Mr. Dove was the younger man by five or six
