to be his wife, and a daughter
who lives with them. As far as my poor judgment goes," and he made
a bow of deference towards the barrister, whose face, however,
seemed to say, that in his opinion the judgment of his friend Mr.
Prendergast did not always go very far--"As far as my poor judgment
goes, the women are honest and respectable. The man is as great
a villain as there is unhung--unless his son be a greater one;
but he is now so driven into a corner, that the truth may be more
serviceable to him than a lie."

"People of that sort are never driven into a corner," said Mr. Die;
"they may sometimes be crushed to death."

"Well, I believe the matter is as I tell you. There at any rate is
Mollett's assurance that it is so. The woman has been residing in the
same place for years, and will come forward at any time to prove that
she was married to this man before he ever saw--before he went to
Dorsetshire: she has her marriage certificate; and as far as I can
learn there is no one able or willing to raise the question against
you. Your cousin Owen certainly will not do so."

"It will hardly do to depend upon that," said Mr. Die, with another
sneer. "Twelve thousand a year is a great provocative to litigation."

"If he does we must fight him; that's all. Of course steps will be
taken at once to get together in the proper legal form all evidence
of every description which may bear on the subject, so that should
the question ever be raised again, the whole matter may be in a
nutshell."

"You'll find it a nutshell very difficult to crack in five-and-twenty
years' time," said Mr. Die.

"And what would you advise me to do?" asked Herbert.

That after all was now the main question, and it was discussed
between them for a long time, till the shades of evening came upon
them, and the dull dingy chambers became almost dark as they sat
there. Mr. Die at first conceived that it would be well that Herbert
should still stick to the law. What indeed could be more conducive
to salutary equanimity in the mind of a young man so singularly
circumstanced, than the study of Blackstone, of Coke, and of Chitty?
as long as he remained there, at work in those chambers, amusing
himself occasionally with the eloquence of the neighbouring courts,
there might be reasonable hope that he would be able to keep his mind
equally poised, so that neither success nor failure as regarded his
Irish inheritance should affect him injuriously. Thus at le