"By Jove! this is a very singular affair," said he, leaning over the back of a chair, and staring me steadfastly in the face. "Your age--your standing in society--your appearance generally, Mr. Dodd, would, I feel bound to say, rather--" Here he hesitated and faltered, as if the right word was not forthcoming; and so I continued for him,-- "Just so, my Lord; would rather refute than fix upon me such an imputation. I 'm not very like the kind of man that figures usually in these sort of cases." "As to _that_," said he, cautiously, "there is no saying. I am now only speaking my own private sentiments, the result of impressions made upon myself as an individual. Courts of Law take their own views of these things; and the House of Lords has also its own way of regarding them." The words threw me into a cold perspiration from head to foot, Tom! Courts of Law! and the House of Lords! was n't that a pretty prospect for an encumbered Irish gentleman? A shot, or even two, at twelve or fourteen paces, cannot be a very expensive thing, in a pecuniary point, to any man, and there 's an awkwardness in declining it if others are anxious to have it, so that you appear ungracious and disobliging. But Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's, Tom, is mighty different. I won't speak of the disgrace that attends such a proceeding at my time of life, nor the hue-and-cry that the Press sets up at you, and follows you with to your own hearth,--"the place from whence you came," and where now your wife waits for you--to perform the last sentence of the law. I won't allude to "Punch" and the "Illustrated News," that live upon you for three weeks; but I 'll just take the thing in its simplest form,--financially. Why, racing, railroads, contested elections, are nothing to it. You go to work exactly as Cobden says France and England do with their armaments: Chatham launches a seventy-four, and out comes Cherbourg with a line-of-battle ship,--"Injured Husband," secures Sir Fitzroy Kelly; "Heartless Seducer," sends his brief to Cock-burn. It's a game of brag from that moment; and there's as much scheming and plotting to get a hold of Frank Murphy as if he was the knave of spades! It matters little or nothing what the upshot of the case may be; you may sink the enemy, or be compelled to strike your own flag; it does n't signify, in the least; the damages of the action are fatal to you.