the world;
he had an innate conviction of the justice of Philip's claim; he had a
remorseful recollection of his brother's generous kindness to himself;
he preferred to have for his heir, in case of Arthur's decease, a nephew
who would marry his daughter, than a remote kinsman. And should, after
all, the lawsuit fail to prove Philip's right, he was not sorry to have
the estate in his own power by Arthur's act in cutting off the entail.
Brief; all these reasons decided him. He saw Philip--he spoke to
Arthur--and all the preliminaries, as suggested above, were arranged
between the parties. The entail was cut off, and Arthur secretly
prevailed upon his father, to whom, for the present, the fee-simple thus
belonged, to make a will, by which he bequeathed the estates to Philip,
without reference to the question of his legitimacy. Mr. Beaufort felt
his conscience greatly eased after this action--which, too, he could
always retract if he pleased; and henceforth the lawsuit became but a
matter of form, so far as the property it involved was concerned.

While these negotiations went on, Arthur continued gradually to decline.
Philip was with him always. The sufferer took a strange liking to this
long-dreaded relation, this man of iron frame and thews. In Philip
there was so much of life, that Arthur almost felt as if in his presence
itself there was an antagonism to death. And Camilla saw thus her
cousin, day by day, hour by hour, in that sick chamber, lending himself,
with the gentle tenderness of a woman, to soften the pang, to arouse the
weariness, to cheer the dejection. Philip never spoke to her of love:
in such a scene that had been impossible. She overcame in their mutual
cares the embarrassment she had before felt in his presence; whatever
her other feelings, she could not, at least, but be grateful to one so
tender to her brother. Three letters of Charles Spencer's had been, in
the afflictions of the house, only answered by a brief line. She now
took the occasion of a momentary and delusive amelioration in Arthur's
disease to write to him more at length. She was carrying, as usual, the
letter to her mother, when Mr. Beaufort met her, and took the letter
from her hand. He looked embarrassed for a moment, and bade her follow
him into his study. It was then that Camilla learned, for the first
time, distinctly, the claims and rights of her cousin; then she learned
also at what price those rights were to be enforced with the l