“I don’t understand you.”

“My dear fellow, you are dull to-night.  I had been so successful in protecting Mrs. Linley and the child, and my excellent courier had found such a charming place of retreat for them in one of the suburbs of Hanover, that ’she saw no reason now for taking the shocking course that I had recommended to her—­so repugnant to all her most cherished convictions; so sinful and so shameful in its doing of evil that good might come.  Experience had convinced her that (thanks to me) there was no fear of Kitty being discovered and taken from her.  She therefore begged me to write to my agent in Edinburgh, and tell him that her application to the court was withdrawn.’  Ah, you understand my position at last.  The headstrong woman was running a risk which renewed all my anxieties.  By every day’s post I expected to hear that she had paid the penalty of her folly, and that your brother had succeeded in getting possession of the child.  Wait a little before you laugh at me.  But for the courier, the thing would have really happened a week since.”

Randal looked astonished.  “Months must have passed,” he objected.  “Surely, after that lapse of time, Mrs. Linley must have been safe from discovery.”

“Take your own positive view of it!  I only know that the thing happened.  And why not?  The luck had begun by being on one side—­why shouldn’t the other side have had its turn next?”

“Do you really believe in luck?”

“Devoutly.  A lawyer must believe in something.  He knows the law too well to put any faith in that:  and his clients present to him (if he is a man of any feeling) a hideous view of human nature.  The poor devil believes in luck—­rather than believe in nothing.  I think it quite likely that accident helped the person employed by the husband to discover the wife and child.  Anyhow, Mrs. Linley and Kitty were seen in the streets of Hanover; seen, recognized, and followed.  The courier happened to be with them—­luck again!  For thirty years and more, he had been traveling in every part of Europe; there was not a landlord of the smallest pretensions anywhere who didn’t know him and like him.  ‘I pretended not to see that anybody was following us,’ he said (writing from Hanover to relieve my anxiety); ’and I took the ladies to a hotel.  The hotel possessed two merits from our point of view—­it had a way out at the back, through the stables, and it was kept by a landlord who was an excellent good friend of mine.  I arranged with him what he was to say when inquiries were made; and I kept my poor ladies prisoners in their lodgings for three days.  The end of it is that Mr. Linley’s policeman has gone away to watch the Channel steam-service, while we return quietly by way of Bremen and Hull.’  There is the courier’s account of it.  I have only to add that poor Mrs. Linley has been fairly frightened into submission.  She changes her mind again, and pledges herself once more to apply for the Divorce.  If we are only lucky enough to get our case heard without any very serious delay, I am not afraid of my client slipping through my fingers for the second time.  When will the courts of session be open to us?  You have lived in Scotland, Randal—­”