eager. All their attempts at conversation were attended with a fear lest
some unhappy expression, some ill-timed allusion might suggest the very
thought they were struggling to suppress; and it was with a feeling of
relief they parted and said good-night, where, at other times, there had
been only regret at separating.

Day after day passed in the same forced and false tranquillity, the
preparations for the approaching journey being the only relief to the
intense anxiety that weighed like a load on each. At length, on the
fifth morning, there came a letter to Augustus in the well-known hand
of Sedley, and he hastened to his room to read it. Some sharp passages
there had been between them of late on the subject of the compromise,
and Bramleigh, in a moment of forgetfulness and anger, even went so
far as to threaten that he would have recourse to the law to determine
whether his agent had or had not overstepped the bounds of his
authority, and engaged in arrangements at total variance to all his
wishes and instructions. A calm but somewhat indignant reply from
Sedley, however, recalled Bramleigh to reconsider his words, and even
ask pardon for them, and since that day their intercourse had been more
cordial and frank than ever. The present letter was very long, and
quite plainly written, with a strong sense of the nature of him it was
addressed to. For Sedley well knew the temper of the man,--his moods of
high resolve and his moments of discouragement,--his desire to be equal
to a great effort, and his terrible consciousness that his courage could
not be relied on. The letter began thus:--

My dear Sir,--If I cannot, as I hoped, announce a victory, I am able
at least to say that we have not been defeated. The case was fairly and
dispassionately stated, and probably an issue of like importance was
never discussed with less of acrimony, or less of that captious and
overreaching spirit which is too common in legal contests. This was so
remarkable as to induce the judge to comment on it in his charge, and
declare that in all his experience on the bench, he had never before
witnessed anything so gratifying or so creditable alike to plaintiff and
defendant.

Lawson led for the other side, and, I will own, made one of the best
openings I ever listened to, disclaiming at once any wish to appeal to
sympathies or excite feeling of pity for misfortunes carried on through
three generations of blameless sufferers; he simply direct