In the same way she had decided to make a friend of Eleanor, who was a class above her and prominent in school life. There had been nothing sentimental about the friendship. She had admired Eleanor's clear mind and moral courage then, just as she admired them now.
It was of that little girl twisting one leg about the other that Eleanor thought now with a warm affection that the later Lydia had not destroyed. She ordered her car and drove into town to the Thorne house. At the door Morson betrayed just the proper solemnity--the proper additional solemnity--for he was never gay.
Yes, Miss Thorne was in, but he could not be sure that she could see Miss Bellington at the moment. Mr. Wiley was in the drawing-room.
"Mr. Wiley?" said Eleanor, trying to remember.
"Tell her I'm here," she said, and presently Morson came back and conducted her to the drawing-room.
Lydia's drawing-room was brilliant with vermilion lacquer, jade, rock crystal, a Chinese painting or two and huge cushioned armchairs and sofas. Here she and Miss Bennett and Mr. Wiley were sitting--at least Mr. Wiley and Miss Bennett were sitting, and Lydia was standing, playing with a jade dog from the mantelpiece, pressing its cold surface against her cheek.
As Eleanor entered, Lydia, with hardly a sound, did a thing she had occasionally seen her do before--she suddenly seemed to radiate greeting and love and gratitude. Miss Bennett introduced Mr. Wiley.
Wiley had established his position early in life--early for a lawyer; so now at fifty-eight he had thirty years of crowded practice behind him. In the nineties, a young man of thirty, his slim frock-coated figure, his narrow, fine features and dark, heavy mustache were familiar in most important court cases, and in the published accounts of them his name always had a prominent place. His enemies at one time had been contemptuous of his legal profundity and had said that he was more of an actor than a lawyer; but if so juries seemed to be more swayed by art than law, for Wiley had a wonderful record of successes. He was a man of scrupulous financial integrity--universally desired as a trustee--an honorable gentleman, a leader at the bar. It was hard to see how Lydia could be in better hands. He might not have been willing to undertake her case but for the fact that he had been her father's lawyer and was her trustee. He had a thorough familiarity, attained through years of conflict over finances, with all the problems of his client's disposition. He knew, for instance, that she would be absolutely truthful with him, a knowledge a lawyer so rarely has in regard to his clients. He knew, too, that she might carry this quality into the witness chair and might ruin her own case with the jury. He was a man accustomed to being listened to, and he was being listened to now.