He
stops, grasps your hand, asks cordially after your health. There is
an open, warm feeling in the man. No hypocrisy whatever. Yet he
talks too fast. He don't give you half a chance to answer one of his
rapid questions, before he is asking another totally different. He
is not at ease. He keeps you from being at ease. You feel it
specially in his house. He is too cordial, too full of effort to
make your visit pleasant to you. You like him, yet you don't feel
altogether at home with him. You are glad when he leaves you to his
more composed wife. You never knew or heard of his saying or doing
anything wrong or even unbecoming. You look upon him as a peculiar
sort of man--well, somehow--but! He is at the bar defending that
woman, who sits by him, dressed in mourning--some chancery case. Or
it is a criminal case, and it is the widow's only son that Leland is
defending. If you had been in his office for the last week, you
would have acknowledged that he has studied the case, has prepared
himself on it as thoroughly as a man can. He is an ambitious man. He
intensely desires to make for himself a fortune and a position. His
address to the judge, or to the jury, as the case may be, is a good
one.
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