client is in the next room: he says you treated him rudely
one day he went to your office. I wish you 'd step in and say a civil
word or two. It would do good, Sedley. I tell you it would do good!' and
he laid such a significant stress on the word, that I walked straight in
and said how very sorry I felt for having expressed myself in a way that
could offend him. 'At all events, sir,' said I, 'if you will not accept
my apology for myself, let me beseech you to separate the interest of my
client from my rudeness, and let not Mr. Bramleigh be prejudiced
because his lawyer was ill-mannered.' 'It's all forgotten, never to be
recalled,' said he, shaking my hand. 'Has Kelson told you my intentions
towards Bramleigh?'

"'He has told me nothing,' said I.

"'Tell him, Kelson. I can't make the matter plain as you can. Tell Mr.
Sedley what we were thinking of.'

"In one word, sir, his plan was a partition of the property. He would
neither disturb your title nor dispute your name. You should be the
Bramleighs of Castello, merely paying him a rent-charge of four thousand
a year. Kelson suggested more, but he said a hundred thousand francs was
ample, and he made no scruple of adding that he never was master of as
many sous in his life.

"'And what does Kelson say to this?' asked I.

"'Kelson says what Sedley would say--that it is a piece of Quixotism
worthy of Hanwell.'

"'_Ma foi_,' said Pracontal, it is not the first time I have fired in
the air.'

"We talked for two hours over the matter. Part of what Pracontal said
was good sound sense, well reasoned and acutely expressed; part was
sentimental rubbish, not fit to listen to. At last I obtained leave
to submit the whole affair to you, not by letter--that they would
n't have--but personally, and there, in one word, is the reason of my
journey.

"Before I left town, however, I saw the Attorney-General, whose opinion
I had already taken on certain points of the case. He was a personal
friend of your father, and willingly entered upon it. When I told
him Pracontal's proposal, he smiled dubiously, and said, 'Why, it's a
confession of defeat; the man must know his case will break down, or he
never would offer such conditions.'

"I tried to persuade him that without knowing, seeing, hearing this
Frenchman, it would not be easy to imagine such an action proceeding
from a sane man, but that his exalted style of talk and his inflated
sentimentality made the thing credible. He wa