The injured lady met her betrayer with marked constraint. She seemed to anticipate little pleasure from the interview, but had evidently made up her mind to go through with it as a duty she owed her reputation and her friend Mr. Brown. This gentleman was grave, elderly, and of an unmistakably professional aspect. In a vague way Heriot fancied he had seen his face before, though he could not recollect where.
"Well," said Mr. Walkingshaw genially, "here we all are; and now what's the business before the meeting?"
"I understand," replied Mr. Brown, in a calm and gentle voice, "that you have broken off your engagement with this lady. Now, as a—well, I may say, as an interested friend of Mrs. Dunbar, I should very much like to have your reasons."
Heriot smiled.
"Will you undertake to believe them?"
"I undertake to give them my closest professional consideration, whatever they are."
"May I ask if you are a lawyer?"
Mr. Brown coughed once or twice before replying.
"He is," said Andrew decisively, and Mr. Brown seemed content to let this reply pass as his own.
"You can talk to me with the utmost frankness," he said; "in fact, I infinitely prefer it."