in his pocket, and still appear before
the lawyer as a man triumphant in his own honesty, who at the first
moment that it was possible had surrendered all that which was not
legally his own, in spite of the foul usage to which he had been
subjected. He might still assume the grand air of injured innocence,
give back the property to the young woman who had insulted him, and
return to his desk in London, leaving behind him in Carmarthenshire
a character for magnanimity and honour. Such a line of conduct had
charms in his eyes. He was quite alive to the delight of heaping
coals of fire on his cousin's head. She had declared that she would
receive nothing at his hands, because she despised him. After that
there would be a sweetness, the savour of which was not lost upon his
imagination, in forcing her to take all from his hands. And it would
become known to all men that it was he who had found the will,--he
who might have destroyed it without the slightest danger of
discovery,--he who without peril might thus have made himself owner
of Llanfeare. There would be a delight to him in the character which
he would thus achieve. But then she had scorned him! No bitterer
scorn had ever fallen from the lips or flashed from the eyes of
a woman. "We take presents from those we love, not from those we
despise!" He had not resented the words at the moment; he had not
dared to do so; but not the less had they entered upon his very
soul,--not the less he hated the woman who had dared so to reply to
the generous offer which he had made her.

And then there was an idea present to him through it all that
abstract justice, if abstract justice could be reached, would declare
that the property should be his. The old man had made his will with
all the due paraphernalia of will-making. There had been the lawyer
and the witnesses brought by the lawyer; and, above all, there had
been the declared reason of the will and its understood purpose.
He had been sent for, and all Carmarthenshire had been made to
understand why it was to be so. Then, in his sickness, the old man
had changed his mind through some fantastic feeling, and almost
on his death-bed, with failing powers, in a condition probably
altogether unfit for such a duty, had executed a document which the
law might respect, but which true justice, if true justice could be
invoked, would certainly repudiate. Could the will be abolished, no
more than justice would be done. But, though the wi