‘No apology at all was needed, my dear sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I have not only read your books—very clever, too, Mr. Wentworth—but I heard of you more than once through Sir Watkin Strahan.’ ‘Perhaps in no complimentary terms?’ ‘Well, you know the late Baronet was a man of strong passions, and, when annoyed, I must admit that his language was what we might call a little unparliamentary.’ ‘It is about his business I have called. You are aware there is an heir?’ ‘Oh yes; Colonel Strahan, the brother.’ ‘I don’t mean him. A son.’ ‘A son! Impossible. The deceased baronet had only one son, and the fine fellow—’ ‘Is now alive.’ ‘Nonsense, my dear sir. He was buried in the family vault, after the doctor and the family were satisfied of his identity, and I was present at the funeral. There was a coroner’s inquest held in order to leave no room for doubt.’ ‘I think not,’ said Wentworth, as he proceeded to unfold the details of his case, to which the lawyer listened at first with a severely judicial air, and then with an incredulous smile. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ he asked, when Wentworth had finished his statement. ‘Pretty much so,’ replied Wentworth. ‘Then,’ replied the lawyer, with a triumphant air, ‘we have little to fear. Sergeant B.’—naming a popular advocate of the day—‘would laugh the case out of court in a quarter of an hour. You have a quarrel with the deceased. Your good lady has—to put it not too strongly—been insulted and shamefully ill-treated by him. Who would believe that, in promoting this suit—should you be so ill-advised as to do that—you came into court with clean hands? The idea is perfectly preposterous.’ The worst of it was that Wentworth, as he withdrew, was compelled to own that there was not a little truth in what the lawyer had said. It was not law but equity that was required in his particular case. In England law and equity, alas! have often different meanings. CHAPTER XXVI. THE ITALIAN COUNTESS. ‘How lovely!’ said a lady to a gentleman on the deck by her side, as they were drinking in all the beauty of the scene as one of the fine ships of the Orient Company dropped her anchor in the Bay of Naples. ‘And look what a swarm of boats have come out to greet us!’ They were a swarm indeed, some of them with divers to exhibit their prowess, some with fruit and flowers, some with the lava ornaments in the manufacture of which the Neapolitans exhibit such exquisite skill, and others with musicians—vocal and instrumental—keeping up for the time quite a serenade. These Neapolitans gain but little, it is to be feared, on such occasions, but the Neapolitans are a frugal people, and make a little go a long way. The lady was Rose, the gentleman by her side was her husband. ‘Yes; and see, one of the boats has a young girl who has come on deck with flowers, which she is fastening in the gentlemen’s coats in hope of a small fee. How pretty she looks!’