The Lost Heir

by G. A. Henty

"What is the verse you referred him to, Hilda?" Netta said. "I confess that I do not know any verse in St. John that seems to be at all applicable to him."

"The quotation is, 'They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'"

Netta could not help smiling. Mr. Pettigrew shook his head.

"You are really too outspoken, Miss Covington, and you will get yourself into trouble. As it is, you have clearly laid yourself open to an action for libel for having practically called the man a murderer. We may think what we like, but we are in no position to prove it."

"I am not afraid of that," she said. "I wish that he would do it; then we should have all the facts brought out in court, and, even if we could not, as you say, prove everything, we could at least let the world know what we think. No, there is no chance of his doing that, Mr. Pettigrew."

"It is fortunate for us, Miss Covington, that our clients are for the most part men. Your sex are so impetuous and so headstrong that we should have a hard time of it indeed if we had to take our instructions from them."

"Mr. Pettigrew, you will please remember that there are three of my sex in this cab, and if you malign us in this way we will at once get out and walk."

The old lawyer smiled indulgently.

"It is quite true, my dear. Women are always passionately certain that they are right, and neither counsel nor entreaty can get them to believe that there can be any other side to a case than that which they take. Talk about men ruining themselves by litigation; the number that do so is as nothing to that of the women who would do so, were they to get as often involved in lawsuits! When Dickens drew the man who haunted the courts he would have been much nearer the mark had he drawn the woman who did so. You can persuade a man that when he has been beaten in every court his case is a lost one; but a woman simply regards a hostile decision as the effect either of great partiality or of incompetence on the part of the judge, and even after being beaten in the House of Lords will attend the courts and pester the judges with applications for the hearing of some new points. It becomes a perfect mania with some of them."

"Very well, Mr. Pettigrew. I would certainly carry my case up to the highest court, and if I were beaten I would not admit that I was in the wrong; still, I do not think that I should pester the poor old judges after that. I suppose we shall all have to come up again to-morrow to the inquest?"