“Now I beg you to attend--you must try to attend,” continued Lady Valeria: “rouse yourself up, if you please, dear Roland. This is not a question of astrologers, or any queer thing of that sort, but a common-sense matter, and, I might say, a difficult point of law, perhaps.” “That being so,” Sir Roland answered, with a smile of bright relief, “our course becomes very simple. We have nothing that we need trouble ourselves to be puzzled with uncomfortably. Messrs. Crookson, Hack, and Clinker--they know how to keep in arrear, and to charge.” “It is your own fault, my dear Roland, if they overcharge you. Everybody will do so, when they know that you mean to put up with it. Your dear father was under my guidance much more than you have ever been, and he never let people overcharge him--more than he could help, I mean.” “I quite perceive the distinction, mother. You have put it very clearly. But how does that bear upon the matter you have now to speak of?” “In a great many ways. This account of Hilary’s desperate behaviour, as I must call it upon sound reflection, leads me to consider the great probability of something happening to him. There are many battles yet to be fought, and some of them may be worse than this. You remember what Mr. Malahide said when your dear father would insist upon that resettlement of the entire property in the year 1799.” Sir Roland knew quite well that it was not his dear father at all, but his mother, who had insisted upon that very stringent and ill-advised proceeding, in which he himself had joined reluctantly, and only by dint of her persistence. However, he did not remind her of this. “To be sure,” he replied, “I remember it clearly; and I have his very words somewhere. He declined to draw it in accordance with the instructions of our solicitors, until his own opinion upon it had been laid before the family--a most unusual course, he said, for counsel in chambers to adopt, but having some knowledge of the parties concerned, he hoped they would pardon his interference. And then his words were to this effect--‘The operation of such a settlement may be most injurious. The parties will be tying their own hands most completely, without--as far as I can perceive--any adequate reason for doing so. Supposing, for instance, there should be occasion for raising money upon these estates during the joint lives of the grandson and granddaughter, and before the granddaughter is of age, there will be no means of doing it. The limitation to her, which is a most unusual one in such cases, will preclude the possibility of representing the fee-simple. The young lady is now just five years old, and if this extraordinary settlement is made, no marketable title can be deduced for the next sixteen years, except, of course, in the case of her decease.’ And many other objections he made, all of which, however, were overruled; and after that protest, he prepared the settlement.”