his part it is generous. It is quite within his power to
keep it; and were he to do so no one would say he was wrong. Why
should he judge his mother?"

Then Mr. Joseph Mason went to another attorney; but it was of no
avail. The time was passing away, and he learned that Lady Mason and
Lucius had actually started for Germany. In his agony for revenge he
had endeavoured to obtain some legal order that should prevent her
departure;--"ne exeat regno," as he repeated over and over again to
his advisers learned in the law. But it was of no avail. Lady Mason
had been tried and acquitted, and no judge would interfere.

"We should soon have her back again, you know, if we had evidence of
forgery," said the last attorney.

"Then, by ----! we will have her back again," said Mason.

But the threat was vain; nor could he get any one even to promise him
that she could be prosecuted and convicted. And by degrees the desire
for vengeance slackened as the desire for gain resumed its sway.
Many men have threatened to spend a property upon a lawsuit who
have afterwards felt grateful that their threats were made abortive.
And so it was with Mr. Mason. After remaining in town over a month
he took the advice of the first of those new lawyers and allowed
that gentleman to put himself in communication with Mr. Furnival.
The result was that by the end of six months he again came out of
Yorkshire to take upon himself the duties and privileges of the owner
of Orley Farm.

And then came his great fight with Dockwrath, which in the end ruined
the Hamworth attorney, and cost Mr. Mason more money than he ever
liked to confess. Dockwrath claimed to be put in possession of Orley
Farm at an exceedingly moderate rent, as to the terms of which he was
prepared to prove that Mr. Mason had already entered into a contract
with him. Mr. Mason utterly ignored such contract, and contended that
the words contained in a certain note produced by Dockwrath amounted
only to a proposition to let him the land in the event of certain
circumstances and results--which circumstances and results never took
place.

This lawsuit Mr. Joseph Mason did win, and Mr. Samuel Dockwrath was,
as I have said, ruined. What the attorney did to make it necessary
that he should leave Hamworth I do not know; but Miriam, his wife,
is now the mistress of that lodging-house to which her own mahogany
furniture was so ruthlessly removed.

CHAPTER LXXX

SHOWING HOW AFFAIRS SETTL