Though Colonel Bramleigh's visit to town was supposed to be in furtherance of that speculation by which Lord Culduff calculated on wealth and splendor, he had really another object, and while Culduff imagined him to be busy in the City, and deep in shares and stock lists, he was closely closeted with his lawyer, and earnestly poring over a mass of time-worn letters and documents, carefully noting down dates, docketing, and annotating, in a way that showed what importance he attached to the task before him.
“I tell you what, Sedley,” said he, as he threw his pen disdainfully from him, and lay back in his chair, “the whole of this move is a party dodge. It is part and parcel of that vile persecution with which the Tory faction pursued me during my late canvass. You remember their vulgar allusions to my father, the brewer, and their coarse jest about my frothy oratory? This attack is but the second act of the same drama.”
“I don't think so,” mildly rejoined the other party. “Conflicts are sharp enough while the struggle lasts; but they rarely 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?”