For a minute or two Audley continued to look thoughtfully before him. At length, “May I take it that this claim is really at an end now?” he said. “Is the decision final, I mean?”
“Unless new evidence crops up,” Stubbs answered—he was a lawyer—“the decision is certainly final. With your lordship’s signature to the papers I brought over——”
“But the claimant might try again?”
“Mr. John Audley might do anything,” Stubbs returned. “I believe him to be mad upon the point, and therefore capable of much. But he could only move on new evidence of the most cogent nature. I do not believe that such evidence exists.”
His employer weighed this for some time. At length, “Then if you were in my place,” he said, “you would not be tempted to hedge?”
“To hedge?” the lawyer exclaimed, as if he had never heard the word before. “I am afraid I don’t understand.”
“I will explain. But first, tell me this. If anything happens to me before I have a child, John Audley succeeds to the peerage? That is clear?”
“Certainly! Mr. John Audley, the claimant, is also your heir-at-law.”
“To title and estates—such as they are?”
“To both, my lord.”