Now, every day brought some new intelligence, and some new expectation, and the mass was altogether unfavorable. Had the blow fallen at once--had any one been in power to say, "Sir Philip Hastings, you must resign all your paternal estates, and pay back at once the rents for nearly twenty years--you must give up the rank and station which you have hitherto held, and occupy a totally different position in society!" Sir Philip would have submitted at once, and with less discomfort than most of my readers can imagine. But it was the wearing, irritating, exciting, yet stupefying progress of a lawsuit which had a painful and distressing effect upon his mind. One day, he thought he saw the case quite clearly--could track the tricks of his adversary, and expose the insecure foundation of his claim; and then would come two or three days of doubt and discussion, and then disappointment, and a new turn where every thing had to begin again. But gradually proofs swelled up, first giving some show of justice to the pretence that John Ayliffe had some claim, then amounting to a probability in his favor, then seeming, to unlearned eyes, very powerful as to his right. I am no lawyer, and therefore cannot pursue all the stages of the proceeding; but John Ayliffe had for his assistants unscrupulous men, whose only aims were to succeed, and to shield themselves from danger in case of detection; and their turns, and twists, and new points, were manifold. Sir Philip Hastings was tortured. It affected his spirits and his temper. He became more gloomy--occasionally irritable, often suspicious. He learned to pore over law papers, to seek out flaws and errors, to look for any thing that might convey a double meaning, to track the tortuous and narrow paths by which that power which bears the name of Justice reaches the clear light of truth, or falls into the thorny deep of error. All this disturbed and changed him; and these daily anxieties and discomforts affected his family too--Emily, indeed, but little, except inasmuch as she was grieved to see her father grieve. But Lady Hastings was not only pained and mortified herself--she contrived to communicate a share of all she felt to others. She became sad--somewhat sullen--and fancied all the time while she was depressing her husband's spirits, and aggravating all he felt by despondency and murmurs, instead of cheering and supporting him by making light of the threatened evils, that she was but participating sympathetically in his anxieties, and feeling a due share of his sorrows. She had no idea of the duty of cheerfulness, in a wife, and how often it may prove the very blessing that God intended in giving man a helpmate. Sickness, it is true, had diminished somewhat the light spirits of her youth, but she had assuredly become a creature of repinings--a murmurer by habit--fit to double rather than divide any load of misfortune which fate might cast upon a husband's shoulders.