isturbed, and she could get no rest. What, if after
twenty years of tranquillity all her troubles must now be
recommenced? What if the battle were again to be fought,--with such
termination as the chances might send to her? Why was it that she was
so much greater a coward now than she had been then? Then she had
expected defeat, for her friends had bade her not to be sanguine;
but in spite of that she had borne up and gone gallantly through the
ordeal. But now she felt that if Orley Farm were hers to give she
would sooner abandon it than renew the contest. Then, at that former
period of her life, she had prepared her mind to do or die in the
cause. She had wrought herself up for the work, and had carried it
through. But having done that work, having accomplished her terrible
task, she had hoped that rest might be in store for her.

As she rose from her bed on the morning after her interview with Sir
Peregrine, she determined that she would seek counsel from him in
whose counsel she could trust. Sir Peregrine's friendship was more
valuable to her than that of Mr. Furnival, but a word of advice
from Mr. Furnival was worth all the spoken wisdom of the baronet,
ten times over. Therefore she wrote her letter, and proposed an
appointment; and Mr. Furnival, tempted as I have said by some evil
spirit to stray after strange goddesses in these his blue-nosed
days, had left his learned brethren at their congress in Birmingham,
and had hurried up to town to assist the widow. He had left that
congress, though the wisest Rustums of the law from all the civilised
countries of Europe were there assembled, with Boanerges at their
head, that great, old, valiant, learned, British Rustum, inquiring
with energy, solemnity, and caution, with much shaking of ponderous
heads and many sarcasms from those which were not ponderous, whether
any and what changes might be made in the modes of answering that
great question, "Guilty or not guilty?" and that other equally great
question, "Is it meum or is it tuum?" To answer which question justly
should be the end and object of every lawyer's work. There were
great men there from Paris, very capable, the Ulpians, Tribonians,
and Papinians of the new empire, armed with the purest sentiments
expressed in antithetical and magniloquent phrases, ravishing to
the ears, and armed also with a code which, taken in its integrity,
would necessarily, as the logical consequence of its clauses, drive
all injustice