s endeavoured to leave Cobden as a necessary legacy to the new
government? Would he have put Cobden into any place in a government
of his own?"

"Oh, d---- Cobden! One has enough of him in the House,--quite."

"But I have not that advantage."

"You shall have some of these days. I'll make over the Battersea
Hamlets to you as soon as I can get a judge's wig on my head. But
I'm thinking of other things now. I wonder whether you and Caroline
Waddington ever will be man and wife?"

"Probably about the time that you are made a judge."

"Ha! ha! Well, I hope if you do do it, it will come off before that.
But I doubt it's coming off at all. Each of you is too proud for the
other. Neither of you can forgive what the other has done."

"What do you mean? But to tell you the truth, Harcourt, I have no
great inclination to discuss that matter just at present. If you
please, we will leave Miss Waddington alone."

"What I mean is this," said the embryo judge, perseveringly, "that
you are too angry with her on account of this enforced delay, and she
is too angry with you because you have dared to be angry with her. I
do not think you will ever come together."

Bertram looked full at Harcourt as this was said, and observed that
there was not the usual easy, gentlemanlike smile on the barrister's
face; and yet the barrister was doing his best to look as usual.
The fact was, that Harcourt was playing a game, and playing it with
considerable skill, but his performance was not altogether that of
a Garrick. Something might have been read in his face had Bertram
been cunning enough to read it. But Bertram was not a cunning man.

Bertram looked full in the other's face. Had he been content to do so
and to say nothing, he would have gained his point, and the subject
would have been at once dropped. Harcourt then could have gone no
further. But Bertram was now angry, and, being angry, he could not
but speak.

"Harcourt, you have interfered once before between me and Miss
Waddington--"

"Interfered!"

"Yes, interfered--in what I then thought and still think to have been
a very unwarrantable manner."

"It was a pity you did not tell me of it at the time."

"It is a pity rather that you should drive me to tell you of it now;
but you do so. When I was in Paris, you said to Miss Waddington what
you had no right to say."

"What did I say?"

"Or, rather, she said to you--"

"Ah! that was no fault of mine."

"But it was a fault