yself, do not marry as nursetenders. There! I
declare that is Sir Marcus driving away already. Only think with what
equanimity I can see wealth and title taking leave of me. Never say
after that that I have not courage."

CHAPTER XLVII. "A TELEGRAM"

"This is a very eventful day for me, George," said Augustus, as they
strolled through the garden after breakfast. "The trial was fixed for
the 13th, and to-day is the 14th; I suppose the verdict will be given
to-day."

"But you have really no doubt of the result? I mean, no more than
anxiety on so momentous a matter must suggest?"

"Pardon me. I have grave doubts. There was such a marriage, as is
alleged, formed by my grandfather; a marriage in every respect legal.
They may not have the same means of proving that which we have; but we
know it. There was a son born to that marriage. We have the letter
of old Lami, asking my grandfather to come over to Bruges for the
christening, and we have the receipt of Hodges and Smart, the jewellers,
for a silver gilt ewer and cup which were engraved with the Bramleigh
crest and cypher, and despatched to Belgium as a present; for my
grandfather did not go himself, pretexting something or other, which
evidently gave offence; for Lami's next letter declares that the
present has been returned, and expresses a haughty indignation at my
grandfather's conduct I can vouch for all this. It was a sad morning
when I first saw those papers; but I did see them, George, and they
exist still. That son of my grandfather's they declare to have married,
and his son is this Pracontal. There is the whole story, and if the
latter part of the narrative be only as truthful as I believe the first
to be, he, and not I, is the rightful owner of Castello."

L'Estrange made no reply; he was slowly going over in his mind the chain
of connection, and examining, link by link, how it held together.

"But why," asked he at length, "was not this claim preferred before? Why
did a whole generation suffer it to lie dormant?"

"That is easily--too easily explained. Lami was compromised in almost
every country in Europe; and his son succeeded him in his love of plot
and conspiracy. Letters occasionally reached my father from this latter;
some of them demanding money in a tone of actual menace. A confidential
clerk, who knew all my father's secrets, and whom he trusted most
implicitly, became one day a defaulter, and absconded, carrying with him
a quantity of pr