“And what a fool you were to do it!” exclaimed his listener, contemptuously.
“Not at all; but I should be a fool were I to try to keep a wife, who is not even one in name, and never casts a thought to me from month’s end to month’s end. I shall be—nay, I am—free too.”
“But not in a legal sense, my dear boy; you cannot marry again.”
“No, thank you,” emphatically knocking the ashes off his cigar with great deliberation as he spoke. “The burnt child dreads the fire. I made a bad start this time, and even if I had the chance—which, please God, I never shall have—I would not tempt Fate again, no matter what the provocation. Women are a great mystery: their chief faults and virtues are so unexpected. Look at Madeline: when we were paupers she was a ministering angel. Now that she is rich, she is merely, a smart society girl, and——”
“And milliners, jewellers, flatterers minister to her,” broke in Jessop.
“I intend to make my profession my mistress, and to devote myself to her heart and soul. The law is a steady old lady.”
“And a very cantankerous, hard, flinty-faced, capricious old hag you’ll find the goddess of Justice, my dear fellow. I am going to give up paying my addresses to her! My uncle has left me a tidy legacy. I intend to settle down in comfort in his old manor-house—shoot, fish, hunt, burn my wig, gown, and law books, and turn my back for ever on the Inns of Court.”
“Jessop, you are not in earnest.”
“I am,” impressively; “and what’s one man’s loss is another man’s gain. It will be all the better for you, Laurence, since you are so bent upon the woolsack. I’ll give you a heave-up with pleasure. You will now get all Bagge and Keepe’s business, for one thing—and, let me tell you, that that is no trifle.”