“Will you forgive me if I remind you that you are my lawyer, Mr. Sedley, not my chaplain nor my confessor?”
“Lawyer without a suit! Why, my dear sir, there will be soon nothing to litigate. You and all belonging to you were an imposition and a fraud. There, there! It's nothing to grow angry over; how could you or any of you suspect your father's legitimacy? You accepted the situation as you found it, as all of us do. That you regarded Pracontal as a cheat was no fault of yours,—he says so himself. I have seen him and talked with him; he was at Kelson's when I called last week, and old Kelson said,—'My client is in the next room: he says you treated him rudely one day he went to your office. I wish you 'd step in and say a civil word or two. It would do good, Sedley. I tell you it would do good!' and he laid such a significant stress on the word, that I walked straight in and said how very sorry I felt for having expressed myself in a way that could offend him. 'At all events, sir,' said I, 'if you will not accept my apology for myself, let me beseech you to separate the interest of my client from my rudeness, and let not Mr. Bramleigh be prejudiced because his lawyer was ill-mannered.' 'It's all forgotten, never to be recalled,' said he, shaking my hand. 'Has Kelson told you my intentions towards Bramleigh?'”
“'He has told me nothing,' said I.”
“'Tell him, Kelson. I can't make the matter plain as you can. Tell Mr. Sedley what we were thinking of.'”
“In one word, sir, his plan was a partition of the property. He would neither disturb your title nor dispute your name. You should be the Bramleighs of Castello, merely paying him a rent-charge of four thousand a year. Kelson suggested more, but he said a hundred thousand francs was ample, and he made no scruple of adding that he never was master of as many sous in his life.”
“'And what does Kelson say to this?' asked I.”
“'Kelson says what Sedley would say—that it is a piece of Quixotism worthy of Hanwell.'”
“'Ma foi,' said Pracontal, it is not the first time I have fired in the air.'”
“We talked for two hours over the matter. Part of what Pracontal said was good sound sense, well reasoned and acutely expressed; part was sentimental rubbish, not fit to listen to. At last I obtained leave to submit the whole affair to you, not by letter—that they would n't have—but personally, and there, in one word, is the reason of my journey.
“Before I left town, however, I saw the Attorney-General, whose opinion I had already taken on certain points of the case. He was a personal friend of your father, and willingly entered upon it. When I told him Pracontal's proposal, he smiled dubiously, and said, 'Why, it's a confession of defeat; the man must know his case will break down, or he never would offer such conditions.'