This was all very true and very proper. Lord Trimmerstone could not but admire and commend Markham’s spirit. On the other hand, Markham was astonished at the apparent change in Lord Trimmerstone’s manners, which were not as they had been, those of a proud and vulgar man of high rank, but civil, gentle, and courteous. The fanatic principle had really done his lordship some good. Nothing short of that could have checked him in his gambling course, or brought him from the society of his reckless and heedless companions. It is true that there was not a very complete, nor, in all respects, an entirely advantageous change in his manners. He had become somewhat morose and cynical; and from being delighted with excesses, he had become snarlingly disgusted at temperate pleasures; and he looked with a kind of moral contempt upon those characters which had stood, in a moral point of view, much higher than his own. But at all events, to get rid of ruinous and profligate habits is desirable, and worth some sacrifices. The interview between Markham and the Earl of Trimmerstone terminated in the conclusion, that the former should take as his legacy a sum equal to that which was devised to Mr. Price; and that the Earl of Trimmerstone should appropriate, according to his own will and pleasure as heir-at-law, that part of the property which Markham contended had not been, morally speaking, devised to any one. It is not designed that our readers should imagine that the Earl of Trimmerstone readily and easily consented to the above-named arrangements; but it is thought unnecessary to narrate at greater length the dialogue which took place between the parties on the subject. Every well-constituted and healthy mind will naturally and easily suppose what arguments Markham used, and by what objections they were met on the part of his lordship; and those who cannot imagine what was said would not understand, enjoy, or believe it, were it written out for them fully and literally. Markham triumphed, or gained his point by virtue of possessing the strongest and best exercised mind of the two; but it was not without great reluctance that Lord Trimmerstone consented to regard that large residue of his late relative’s property as being undisposed of by the will: for his lordship had never been a mean or selfish man in the days of his profligacy and libertinism; and now that he had altogether changed his manner of life, and had seriously and soberly set about a reformation of his manners, and was amply supplied by his late relative’s bequest with all the means which he could desire, he really did feel anxious to perform an act of generosity, and would willingly, for the sake of the reputation of the action, have surrendered the property in question to Markham, even had there been any doubt as to the legal accuracy of the bequest.