necessary to establish it, in legal form. The letters were still in the hands of those most interested to suppress them. The witness whose testimony he had just heard was in their hands, and no doubt might be suborned or sent away. If it were any one but Edgar, he would have felt that all he had heard to-night might be but as a dream, and that his supplanter might still be persuaded by Fazakerly, by Clare, by some late dawning of self-interest, to defend himself. In such a case his own position would be as difficult as could be conceived. He would have to originate a lingering expensive lawsuit, built upon evidence which he could not produce. If he were himself in Edgar’s position, he felt that he could foil any such attack; but Edgar was a fool, a Quixote, a madman; or rather he was a low fellow, of no blood or courage, who would give in without a struggle, who had not spirit enough to strike a blow for his inheritance. By degrees he got to despise him, as he pursued his thoughts. It was want of blood which made him shirk from the contest, not the sense of justice or right, or any fantastic idea of honour. Arthur Arden himself was an honourable man--he did nothing which society could put a mark against, which could stain his reputation among men; but to expose the weakness of his own position, to relinquish voluntarily, not being forced to it, his living and name, and everything he had, in the world!--He calculated upon Edgar that he would do this, and he despised him for it, and concluded in his heart that such cowardice and weakness, though, perhaps, they might be dignified by other names--such as generosity and honour--were owing to the meanness of his extraction, the vulgarity of his nature. No Arden would have done it, he said to himself, with contempt.