“We never should have come near to joining issue had you not let your heart run away with your head. A lawyer ceases to be a lawyer when he allows feelings and prejudices to interfere with his judgment. So far as our profession goes a man must be all head, a legal thinking machine, if you like. It is not perhaps an ideal equipment, but it is the only workable one.”
“I dare say,” Herriard replied, in a tone of doubtful conviction. “Happily, or unhappily, very few of us can quite succeed in stifling our private judgment of those with whom we have to deal.”
“True. And the man who succeeds best in that makes the best lawyer, other things being equal,” Gastineau returned dogmatically. “Now we won’t quarrel, Geof, over the last word of this burning subject, but I must give it you in the form of a word of warning. Let me as an older man of the world than yourself, and as one who has nothing more to gain or lose in this world, put you on your guard against the state into which you are drifting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I refer to the Countess Alexia. That is all, and I will say no more, except that if you let yourself go too far in that direction you will bitterly repent it.”
Herriard repressed the words that sprang to his lips. “Very well, Gastineau,” he responded simply; “I take your warning in the spirit in which it is given.”
An inscrutable smile flitted across Gastineau’s face, as he nodded in response to the other’s words.
And so they parted.
Herriard went towards Green Street in a perplexed and uneasy state of mind. There could be only one explanation of Gastineau’s warning, and it was that he believed Countess Alexia guilty. But that was utterly preposterous. Herriard comforted himself with the thought that his friend knew little of the Countess, having only met her casually in society years before. His was a hard, judicial brain; he would believe anything of anybody if the legal probabilities pointed to such a conclusion; the human element in the case, if not entirely ignored, would be reduced to an equation and governed by the law of mathematical chances. But, logic or no logic, the idea that the Countess might be guilty was monstrous. Knowing her as he did, Herriard was sure that she had not even the most venial and innocent connection with Martindale’s death. Nor, putting bias away, could he find the slightest ground for discrediting Campion’s testimony. Well, thank Heaven, the case would soon be brought, as he fully anticipated, to a happy conclusion, and his relations with the Countess need never again form the subject of argument.