“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 degree of refinement that I can accept a downright swindle as a demand founded on justice.”
“Let us prove it a swindle, and there is an end of it.”
“And will you tell me, sir,” said he, passionately, “that every gentleman holds his estates on the condition that the title may be contested by any impostor who can dupe people into advancing money to set the law in motion?”
“When such proceedings are fraudulent a very heavy punishment awaits them.”
“And what punishment of the knave equals the penalty inflicted on the honest man in exposure, shame, insolent remarks, and worse than even these, a contemptuous pity for that reverse of fortune which newspaper writers always announce as an inevitable consummation?”
“These are all hard things to bear, but I don't suspect they ever deterred any man from holding an estate.”
The half jocular tone of his remark rather jarred on Bramleigh's sensibilities, and he continued to walk the room in silence; at last, stopping short, he wheeled round and said,—