 the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board,
and might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how. Ever
since his interview with Jermyn, his mind had been occupied with the charade it
offered to his ingenuity. What was the real meaning of the lawyer's interest in
him, and in his relations with Maurice Christian Bycliffe? Here was a secret;
and secrets were often a source of profit, of that agreeable kind which involved
little labour. Jermyn had hinted at profit which might possibly come through
him; but Christian said inwardly, with well-satisfied self-esteem, that he was
not so pitiable a nincompoop as to trust Jermyn. On the contrary, the only
problem before him was to find out by what combination of independent knowledge
he could outwit Jermyn, elude any purchase the attorney had on him through his
past history, and get a handsome bonus, by which a somewhat shattered man of
pleasure might live well without a master. Christian, having early exhausted the
more impulsive delights of life, had become a sober calculator; and he had made
up his mind that, for a man who had long ago run through his own money,
servitude in a great family was the best kind of retirement after that of a
pensioner; but if a better chance offered, a person of talent must not let it
slip through his fingers. He held various ends of threads, but there was danger
in pulling at them too impatiently. He had not forgotten the surprise which had
made him drop the punch-ladle, when Mr Crowder, talking in the steward's room,
had said that a scamp named Henry Scaddon had been concerned in a lawsuit about
the Transome estate. Again, Jermyn was the family lawyer of the Transomes; he
knew about the exchange of names between Scaddon and Bycliffe; he clearly wanted
to know as much as he could about Bycliffe's history. The conclusion was not
remote that Bycliffe had had some claim on the Transome property, and that a
difficulty had arisen from his being confounded with Henry Scaddon. But hitherto
the other incident which had been apparently connected with the interchange of
names - Mr Lyon's demand that he should write down the name Maurice Christian,
accompanied with the question whether that were his whole name - had had no
visible link with the inferences arrived at through Crowder and Jermyn.
    The discovery made this morning at the Free School that Esther was the
daughter of the Dissenting preacher at last suggested a possible link. Until
then, Christian had not known why Esther's face had impressed him so
