“Now this man is a very different sort of person from his father. He has been well educated, mixed much with the world, and has the manners and bearing of a gentleman. I have not been able to learn much of his career; but I know that he served as a lieutenant in a French hussar regiment, and subsequently held some sort of employment in Egypt. He has never stooped to employ threat or menace, but frankly appealed to the law to establish his claim; and his solicitor, Kelson, of Furnivars Inn, is one of the most respectable men in the profession.”
“You have seen this Monsieur Pracontal yourself?”
“Yes. By a strange accident I met him at your brother's, Captain Bramleigh's, breakfast table. They had been fellow-travellers, without the slightest suspicion on either side how eventful such a meeting might be. Your brother, of course, could know nothing of Pracontal's pretensions; but Pracontal, when he came to know with whom he had been travelling, must have questioned himself closely as to what might have dropped from him inadvertently.”
Augustus leaned his head on his hand in deep thought, and for several minutes was silent. At last he said, “Give me your opinion, Mr. Sedley,—I don't mean your opinion as a lawyer, relying on nice technical questions or minute points of law, but simply your judgment as a man of sound sense, and, above all, of such integrity as I know you to possess,—and tell me what do you think of this claim? Is it,—in one word, is it founded on right?”
“You are asking too much of me, Mr. Bramleigh. First of all, you ask me to disassociate myself from all the habits and instincts of my daily life, and give you an opinion on a matter of law, based on other rules of evidence than those which alone I suffer myself to be guided by. I only recognize one kind of right,—that which the law declares and decrees.”
“Is there not such a thing as a moral right?”
“There may be; but we are disputatious enough in this world, with all our artificial aids to some fixity of judgment, and for Heaven's sake let us not soar up to the realms of morality for our decisions, or we shall bid adieu to guidance forever.”
“I 'm not of your mind there, sir. I think it is quite possible to conceive a case in which there could be no doubt on which side lay the right, and not difficult to believe that there are men who would act, on conviction, to their own certain detriment.”
“It's a very hopeful view of humanity, Mr. Bramleigh,” said the lawyer, and he took a pinch of snuff.
“I am certain it is a just one. At least, I will go this far to sustain my opinion. I will declare to you here, that if the time should ever come that it may depend upon me to decide this matter, if I satisfy my mind that M. Pracontal's claim be just and equitable,—that, in fact, he is simply asking for his own,—I 'll not screen myself behind the law's delays or its niceties; I 'll not make it a question of the longest purse or the ablest advocate, but frankly admit that the property is his, and cede it to him.”