But now, further
reticence was both useless and undesirable; he determined to make a
clean breast of the whole story to his father. It was early for a
barrister to be leaving town for the Easter vacation; and though
Alan had chambers of his own in Lincoln's Inn, where he lived by
himself, he was so often in and out of the house in Harley Street
that his absence from London would at once have attracted the
parental attention.
Dr. Merrick was a model of the close-shaven clear-cut London
consultant. His shirt-front was as impeccable as his moral
character was spotless--in the way that Belgravia and Harley Street
still understood spotlessness. He was tall and straight, and
unbent by age; the professional poker which he had swallowed in
early life seemed to stand him in good stead after sixty years,
though his hair had whitened fast, and his brow was furrowed with
most deliberative wrinkles. So unapproachable he looked, that not
even his own sons dared speak frankly before him. His very smile
was restrained; he hardly permitted himself for a moment that weak
human relaxation.
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