t sum, trifling as it was, may have
smoothed your path and assisted your career. And why tell you all this
now? To dissuade from asserting rights you conceive to be just?--Heaven
forbid! If justice is with you, so also is the duty due to your mother's
name. But simply for this: that in asserting such rights, you content
yourself with justice, not revenge--that in righting yourself, you do
not wrong others. If the law should decide for you, the arrears you
could demand would leave my father and sister beggars. This may be
law--it would not be justice; for my father solemnly believed himself,
and had every apparent probability in his favour, the true heir of
the wealth that devolved upon him. This is not all. There may be
circumstances connected with the discovery of a certain document that,
if authentic, and I do not presume to question it, may decide the
contest so far as it rests on truth; circumstances which might seem
to bear hard upon my father's good name and faith. I do not know
sufficiently of law to say how far these could be publicly urged, or, if
urged, exaggerated and tortured by an advocate's calumnious ingenuity.
But again, I say justice, and not revenge! And with this I conclude,
inclosing to you these lines, written in your own hand, and leaving you
the arbiter of their value.

"ARTHUR BEAUFORT."

The lines inclosed were these, a second time placed before the reader

"I cannot guess who you are. They say that you call yourself a
relation; that must be some mistake. I knew not that my poor mother
had relations so kind. But, whoever you be, you soothed her last
hours--she died in your arms; and if ever-years, long years, hence--
we should chance to meet, and I can do anything to aid another, my
blood, and my life, and my heart, and my soul, all are slaves to
your will! If you be really of her kindred I commend to you my
brother; he is at ---- with Mr. Morton. If you can serve him, my
mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian angel. As for me, I
ask no help from any one; I go into the world, and will carve out my
own way. So much do I shrink from the thought of charity from
others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now, if your
kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my mother's grave.

PHILIP."

This letter was sent to the only address of Monsieur de Vaudemont which
the Beauforts knew, viz., his apar