I have told you what we believe to be the truth,
and as that in no single detail militates against the case as it will
be put forward by my learned friends opposite, we have no evidence to
offer. We are content to accept the marriage of the widowed Countess
as a marriage in every respect legal and binding." So saying the
Solicitor-General sat down.

It was then past five o'clock, and the court, as a matter of course,
was adjourned, but it was adjourned by consent to the Wednesday,
instead of to the following day, in order that there might be due
consideration given to the nature of the proceedings that must
follow. As the thing stood at present it seemed that there need be no
further plea of "Lovel v. Murray and Another." It had been granted
that Murray was not Murray, but Lovel; yet it was thought that
something further would be done.

It had all been very pretty; but yet there had been a feeling of
disappointment throughout the audience. Not a word had been said as
to that part of the whole case which was supposed to be the most
romantic. Not a word had been said about the tailor.

CHAPTER XXIX.

DANIEL THWAITE ALONE.

There were two persons in the court who heard the statement of the
Solicitor-General with equal interest,--and perhaps with equal
disapprobation,--whose motives and ideas on the subject were exactly
opposite. These two were the Rev. Mr. Lovel, the uncle of the
plaintiff, and Daniel Thwaite, the tailor, whose whole life had been
passed in furthering the cause of the defendants. The parson, from
the moment in which he had heard that the young lady whom he had
entertained in his house had engaged herself to marry the tailor,
had reverted to his old suspicions,--suspicions which, indeed, he
had never altogether laid aside. It had been very grievous to him to
prefer a doubtful Lady Anna to a most indubitable Lady Fitzwarren.
He liked the old-established things,--things which had always been
unsuspected, which were not only respectable but firm-rooted. For
twenty years he had been certain that the Countess was a false
countess; and he, too, had lamented with deep inward lamentation over
the loss of the wealth which ought to have gone to support the family
earldom. It was monstrous to him that the property of one Earl Lovel
should not appertain to the next Earl. He would on the moment have
had the laws with reference to the succession of personal property
altered, with retrospective action, so t