"I'm getting on for forty, you know," he went on, getting no reply. "And they'll make the pater a baronet one of these days. About time I got married, don't you think, old man!" Then he consulted his watch again; and hurried off to Norfolk Street. 

Ronnie, having paid for their coffee, sauntered out through the colonnades to his chambers, and back through Inner Temple Lane toward the law courts. Sauntering, brief under arm, he thought of his friend. 

So Jimmy intended proposing to Mollie Fullerford. She would accept him, of course. Jimmy was a splendid match. Reticent devil--he hadn't even mentioned the girl since their return from Key Hatch. Jimmy would be Aliette's brother-in-law. Aliette! He had no right to think of her as "Aliette." Jimmy to marry Aliette's sister--that would mean the end of their friendship. How women complicated one's life! Why should he end his friendship with Jimmy, his best pal, just because . . . 

"Because of what?" asked the schoolmaster Cavendish in Ronnie's mind. 

"Because you're in love with his future sister-in-law," answered the imaginative Wixton. 

Passing up the broad steps into the law courts, Ronnie was aware of unusual commotion. Society, mainly represented by the "Ritz crowd," had decided to patronize the Ellerson case. Lady Cynthia Barberus and her friend Miss Elizabeth Cattistock were posing to massed batteries of press cameras. An aristocratic poetess with bobbed hair had draped herself by the railings. Two actresses, so fashionable that they only needed to act when off the stage, drove up with Lord Letchingbury, the latest patron of the unpaying drama, in a Rolls-Royce limousine, causing mild excitement among a crowd of collected loafers. The constable, saluting Ronnie, positively beamed approval. 

Ronnie, returning the salute a trifle grimly (like many of his kind, the publicity side of the law always irritated him), entered the archway and turned left-handed into the robing-rooms. 

Here all was quiet again. Hugh Spillcroft, a rising young specialist in commercial cases, spoke to him as he arranged the white bands round his collar, tucked in the tapes and drew on his black "stuff" robe before adjusting the light gray, horsehair wig. 

"Going to win?" 

"Settled out of court, I should say." 

"Not if H. B. can help it," snapped 

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