T."

In this fencing-match between a lawyer and a lady each gained an
advantage. The lawyer's letters, as might have been expected, were the
best adapted to be read to a jury; but the lady, subtler in her way,
obtained, at a small sacrifice, what she wanted, and that without
raising the slightest suspicion of her true motive in the
correspondence.

She announced her success to Mr. Oldfield; but, in the midst of it, she
quaked with terror at the thought of what Sir Charles would say to her
for writing to Mr. Bassett at all.

She now, with the changeableness of her sex, hoped and prayed Mr.
Bassett would admit the anonymous letter, and so all her subtlety and
pains prove superfluous.

Quaking secretly, but with a lovely face and serene front, she took her
place at the assizes, before the judge, and got as near him as she
could.

The court was crowded, and many ladies present.

_Bassett v. Bassett_ was called in a loud voice; there was a hum of
excitement, then a silence of expectation, and the plaintiff's counsel
rose to address the jury.

CHAPTER XII.

"MAY it please your Lordship: Gentlemen of the Jury--The plaintiff in
this case is Richard Bassett, Esquire, the direct and lineal
representative of that old and honorable family, whose monuments are to
be seen in several churches in this county, and whose estates are the
largest, I believe, in the county. He would have succeeded, as a matter
of course, to those estates, but for an arrangement made only a year
before he was born, by which, contrary to nature and justice, he was
denuded of those estates, and they passed to the defendant. The
defendant is nowise to blame for that piece of injustice; but he
profits by it, and it might be expected that his good fortune would
soften his heart toward his unfortunate relative. I say that if
uncommon tenderness might be expected to be shown by anybody to this
deserving and unfortunate gentleman, it would be by Sir Charles
Bassett, who enjoys his cousin's ancestral estates, and can so well
appreciate what that cousin has lost by no fault of his own."

"Hear! hear!"

"Silence in the court!"

_The Judge._--I must request that there may be no manifestation of
feeling.

_Counsel._--I will endeavor to provoke none, my lord. It is a very
simple case, and I shall not occupy you long. Well, gentlemen, Mr.
Bassett is a poor man, by no fault of his; but if he is poor, he is
proud and honorable. He has met the frow