Now there certainly was need of Wylder's assurance that nothing
unpleasant should happen to the conscious bearer of such a message to an
officer and a gentleman. Jos. Larkin did not like it. Still there was a
confidence in his own conciliatory manners and exquisite tact. Something,
too, might be learned by noting Lake's looks, demeanour, and language
under this direct communication from the man to whom his relations were
so mysterious.

Larkin looked at his watch; it was about the hour when he was likely to
find Lake in his study. The attorney withdrew the little private
enclosure, and slipt it, with a brief endorsement, into the neat sheaf of
Wylder's letters, all similarly noted, and so locked it up in the iron
safe. He intended being perfectly ingenuous with Lake, and showing him
that he had 'no secrets--no concealments--all open as the day'--by
producing the letter in which the 'notice' was enclosed, and submitting
it for Captain Lake's perusal.

When Lawyer Larkin reached the dim chamber, with the Dutch tapestries,
where he had for a little while to await Captain Lake's leisure, he began
to anticipate the scene now so immediately impending more uncomfortably
than before. The 'notice' was, indeed, so outrageous in its spirit, and
so intolerable in its language, that, knowing something of Stanley's wild
and truculent temper, he began to feel a little nervous about the
explosion he was about to provoke.

The Brandon connection, one way or other, was worth to the attorney in
hard cash between five and six hundred a-year. In influence, and what is
termed 'position,' it was, of course, worth a great deal more. It would