I will not enter into all those preparations for the trial which brightened life immensely to Mrs. Piercey, and made her feel that she had scarcely lived before, and that, however the trial might turn out, this crowded hour of glorious life was worth the age without a name which would have been her fate had all been peaceful and undisturbed. She had constant visits from her solicitors or their emissaries; constant correspondence; a necessity often recurring for running up to town, which opened to her many new delights. No expense was spared in these preliminaries, the lawyers, to whom the speculative character of the whole proceedings was clearly apparent, thinking it well (they were, as has been said, not scrupulous members of their class) to make as much out of it in the meantime as possible; and Patty herself having, in a different degree, something of the same feeling. She was ready, as has been said, to sacrifice half of her kingdom in order to win her plea, and, at the same time, she indulged freely in the pleasure of spending, with the idea before her that even in the event of losing, that pleasure could not be taken from her. Whatever she acquired now would, in that respect, be pure gain. Therefore there can be no doubt that she enjoyed her life during this interval. She had committed one or two imprudencies, which her advisers much regretted and gently condemned. She had made an enemy of Dunning for one thing, which they blamed greatly, and she had alienated the sympathies of her neighbours by her behaviour in the first flush of her triumph, which Lady Hartmore did not fail to publish. But if the client were not foolish sometimes, to what good would be the cleverness of her guides and counsellors? Patty, for her part, declared that she had no fear of Dunning. What could Dunning say that could affect her position? He could describe Sir Giles’ hopes, which, it was evident, must have been mistaken; but she could swear, with a good conscience, that she had never said anything about those hopes to Sir Giles. Patty’s modesty, the instinct that had made her really incapable of taking advantage of Sir Giles’ delusion, had, it is to be feared, by this time, by dint of familiarity with the subject, become much subdued. She had shrunk with a blush from any such discussion, even with her old father-in-law; but she was not afraid now of the ordeal of being examined and cross-examined on the subject before all the world. She was not, indeed, at all afraid of the examination which nowadays frightens most people out of their wits. This, no doubt, was partly ignorance, but it was partly also a happy confidence in her own power to encounter and discomfit any man who should stand up to question her. This confidence has been seen in various cases of young women who have encountered jauntily an ordeal in which it is difficult for the strongest not to come to grief; but an ignorant girl often