rely carry their
bitterness beyond the day of battle."

"That is an agent's view of the matter," said Bramleigh, with asperity.
"The agent always persists in believing the whole thing a sham fight;
but though men do talk a great deal of rot and humbug about their
principles on the hustings, their personal feelings are just as real,
just as acute, and occasionally just as painful, as on any occasion in
their lives; and I repeat to you, the trumped-up claim of this foreigner
is neither more nor less than a piece of party malignity."

"I cannot agree with you. The correspondence we have just been looking
at shows how upwards of forty years ago the same pretensions were put
forward, and a man calling himself Montagu Lami Bramleigh declared he
was the rightful heir to your estates."

"A rightful heir whose claims could be always compromised by a
ten-pound note was scarcely very dangerous."

"Why make any compromise at all if the fellow was clearly an impostor?"

"For the very reason that you yourself now counsel a similar course:
to avoid the scandal of a public trial. To escape all those insolent
comments which a party press is certain to pass on a political
opponent."

"That could scarcely have been apprehended from the Bramleigh I speak
of, who was clearly poor, illiterate, and friendless; whereas the
present man has, from some source or other, funds to engage eminent
counsel and retain one of the first men at the bar."

"I protest, Sedley, you puzzle me," said Bramleigh, with an angry
sparkle in his eye. "A few moments back you treated all this pretension
as a mere pretext for extorting money, and now you talk of this fellow
and his claim as subjects that may one day be matter for the decision of
a jury. Can you reconcile two views so diametrically opposite?"

"I think I can. It is at law as in war. The feint may be carried on
to a real attack whenever the position assailed be possessed of an
over-confidence or but ill defended. It might be easy enough, perhaps,
to deal with this man. Let him have some small success, however; let him
gain a verdict, for instance, in one of those petty suits for ejectment,
and his case at once becomes formidable."

"All this," said Bramleigh, "proceeds on the assumption that there is
something in the fellow's claim?"

"Unquestionably."

"I declare," said Bramleigh, rising and pacing the room, "I have not
temper for this discussion. My mind has not been disciplined to that
de