‘My dear sir, clever men, but unscrupulous, notoriously unscrupulous.’
‘My dear Pergament, when a gang of swindlers hatch a conspiracy to deprive me of house and home, I don’t want my rights defended by scrupulous men.’
‘But, really, Shandrish, a man I never gave a brief to in my life,’ remonstrated the solicitor.
‘What does that signify? It is my battle we have to fight, and you must let me choose my weapons.’
CHAPTER XV
‘ENID, THE PILOT STAR OF MY LONE LIFE.’
Having seen the chief representative of Pergament and Pergament, placed his interests in the hands of that respectable house, and chosen the advocates who were to defend his cause, should this pretended cousin of his dare to assert her rights in a court of law, Churchill Penwyn felt himself free to go back to Cornwall by the mid-day train. He had an uneasy feeling in being away from home at this juncture—a vague sense of impending peril on all sides—a passionate desire to be near his wife and child.
He had ample time for thought during that long journey westward; time to contemplate his position in all its bearings, to wonder whether his wisdom might not, after all, be folly, beside Madge’s clear-sighted sense of right.
‘She spoke the bitter truth,’ he thought. ‘Wealth and estate have not brought me happiness. They have gratified my self-esteem, satisfied my ambition, but they have not given me restful nights or peaceful dreams. Would it be better for me to please Madge, throw up the sponge, and go to the other end of the world, to begin life afresh, remote from all old associations, out of reach of the memory of the past?’
‘No!’ he told himself, after a pause. ‘There is no new life for me. I am too old for beginning again.’