CHAPTER XXXVI. THE LAW AND ITS CHANCES. We left Mr. Daly at the conclusion of our last chapter in the exercise of--what to him was always a critical matter--the functions of a polite letter-writer. His faults, it is but justice to say, were much less those of style than of the individual himself; for if he rarely failed to convey a clear notion of his views and intentions, he still more rarely omitted to impart considerable insight into his own character. His abrupt and broken sentences, his sudden outbreaks of intelligence or passion, were not inaptly conveyed by the character of a handwriting which was bold, careless, and hurried. Indifferent to everything like neatness or accuracy, generally blotted, and never very legible, these defects, if they did not palliate, they might, in a measure, explain something of his habits of thought and action; but now, when about to dictate to another, the case was different, and those interruptions which Daly would have set down by a dash of his pen, were to be conveyed by the less significant medium of mere blanks. “I 'm ready,” said Lionel, at length, as he sat for some time in silent expectation of Daly's commencement. But that gentleman was walking up and down the room with his hands behind his back, occasionally stopping to look out upon the lawn. “Very well, begin--'My dear Lord Netherby,' or 'My dear Lord,'--it does n't signify which, though I suppose he would be of another mind, and find a whole world of difference between the two. Have you that?--very well. Then go on to mention, in such terms as you like yourself, the sudden change of fortune that has befallen your family,--briefly, but decisively.” “Dictate it, I'll follow you,” said Lionel, somewhat put out by this mode of composition. “Oh! it doesn't matter exactly what the words are,--say, that a d----d scoundrel, Gleeson--Honest Tom we always called him--has cut and run with something like a hundred thousand pounds, after forging and falsifying every signature to our leases for the last ten or fifteen years; we are, in consequence, ruined--obliged to leave the abbey, take to a cottage--a devilish poor one, too.” “Don't go so fast--'we are in consequence--'”