assistance in investigation was an unmeaning
bravado; his conduct to myself testified his continued ill-will towards
me,--an ill-will which might possibly have instigated him in the fraud
scarcely less than the whispers of interest and cupidity.

But while this was the natural and indelible impression on my mind,
I could not disguise from myself the extreme difficulty I should
experience in resisting my brother's claim. So far as my utter want of
all legal knowledge would allow me to decide, I could perceive nothing
in the will itself which would admit of a lawyer's successful cavil: my
reasons for suspicion, so conclusive to myself, would seem nugatory to
a judge. My uncle was known as a humourist; and prove that a man differs
from others in one thing, and the world will believe that he differs
from them in a thousand. His favour to me would be, in the popular eye,
only an eccentricity, and the unlooked-for disposition of his will only
a caprice. Possession, too, gave Gerald a proverbial vantage-ground,
which my whole life might be wasted in contesting; while his command of
an immense wealth might, more than probably, exhaust my spirit by delay,
and my fortune by expenses. Precious prerogative of law, to reverse the
attribute of the Almighty! to fill the _rich_ with good things, but to
send the poor empty away! _In corruptissima republica plurimoe
leges_. Legislation perplexed is synonymous with crime unpunished,--a
reflection, by the way, I should never have made, if I had never had a
law-suit: sufferers are ever reformers.

Revolving, then, these anxious and unpleasing thoughts, interrupted, at
times, by regrets of a purer and less selfish nature for the friend I
had lost, and wandering, at others, to the brighter anticipations of
rejoining Isora, and drinking from her eyes my comfort for the past and
my hope for the future, I continued and concluded my day's travel.

The next day, on resuming my journey, and on feeling the time approach
that would bring me to Isora, something like joy became the most
prevalent feeling in my mind. So true it is that misfortunes little
affect us so long as we have some ulterior object, which, by arousing
hope, steals us from affliction. Alas! the pang of a moment becomes
intolerable when we know of nothing _beyond_ the moment which it soothes
us to anticipate! Happiness lives in the light of the future: attack the
present; she defies you! darken the future, and you destroy her!

I