The household of No. 22 consisted of this gentleman, his daughter, who was sixteen years old at the period this story opens, and his second wife.
One maid-servant "did" for the family with the assistance of the daughter. Mrs. Grimm did not condescend to work, but she superintended energetically. Thus it will be seen that though Mr. Grimm was fairly well off he did not waste his means in ostentation, and kept up his establishment on an economical footing.
One of our most distinguished novelists started life as a gambler. He was remarkably successful at play, and was rapidly amassing a fortune; but one day, we are told, he happened to perceive the reflection of his face in a mirror, when he was so horrified at the haggard appearance it presented, that he incontinently threw up his destructive pursuit for that of literature, in which he became even more successful than at the green table.
Even as wise as this great author was Mr. Grimm. At the commencement of his career he too had been a gambler, a dabbler on the stock exchange—with clients' money sometimes; but perceiving that the fierce anxiety was turning his hair grey, he forswore gambling: not for literature though, but for quiet safe swindling. Swindling doesn't age one like play, and so far as results to oneself are concerned, is the most innocent vice of the two. A thief is as often as not a dear amiable fat jovial fellow, with the lightest of consciences. Is your gambler ever anything but the reverse?
Mr. Grimm was not a lovable man. He was that perhaps lowest of all creatures that crawl the earth—a pettifogging attorney, capable of any meanness, any dishonesty, any cruel robbery of orphan and widow, and just sharp enough to know where to draw the line between moral crime and legal crime. He had, it is true, on two occasions run rather close risks of being scratched off the rolls, and had received many a well-earned rebuke from judge in open Court or Master in Chambers; but this "gentleman by Act of Parliament," knew what he was about, and so far had not overreached himself to ruin as do so many of his class, when long impunity has made them careless in their knavery.
Mr. Grimm's first wife was a foolish weak woman of the pale eyes, pale hair, and washed-out complexion type.
She had been sold to the attorney by her father. The poor creature herself, too feeble of will to offer resistance, was led submissively to the altar.
The father, one of those retired officers of the selfish, disreputable, hard-up, red-nosed class, being well entangled in Mr. Grimm's toils, had handed over his daughter to him in discharge of an old debt connected with bill-discounting.
The attractions of the said daughter consisted of an absolute reversion that would some day fall into her possession.