A fit of coughing stopped his revelations, to which the discreet lawyer turned a deaf ear. He was an excellent person who lived in a large, square, white house, with shrubberies, and a carriage-drive, and a page in buttons; to him marriage was marriage, and a duke and duchess were one and indivisible; when such people got into law courts he was sincerely sorry that they did not respect themselves as greatly as he respected them; he knew that the gentleman, too, who now lay dying had been in many discreditable straits, for he had himself been frequently called in to assist in getting the delinquent out of them; but a duke was a duke, Otterbourne was Otterbourne, in the eyes of the good and conservative attorney, and he had a deaf ear which he could turn very usefully when needed. To assist in making such a terrible hotch-potch of scandal, as would be made by any posthumous repudiation, might have tempted a London Old Bailey practitioner, but it did not tempt for an instant this respectable rural devotee of Themis. Cocky was silent for some time, breathing hard and deliberating what he would do. Almost more than his wife he hated his brother Alberic, who had always been the beloved of his father. He raised himself, at last, feebly on his pillows. “Look here, Curton,” he said, with gasping effort, “you make my will, and be quick about it, for I’m dead beat. I can’t touch much, I know, but where I can do anything, make it as deuced unpleasant for her as you can; and renew the--the--what d’ye call it--settlement for the jewels, so that she’ll have to give ’em up; renew it just as it stood in my father’s and grandfather’s wills, will you? And look here, Curton: I appoint as guardians my brother-in-law and my uncle Augustus.” Mr. Curton inclined his head in approval. “Lord Hurstmanceaux and the Bishop of Dunwich? Your Grace could not make a more admirable selection. The highest principle----” Cocky chuckled with a sound very like the death-rattle. “I choose Ronnie ’cause he’s so damned conscientious, he can’t refuse, and he’ll hate it so; and I choose old Augustus ’cause he came down once when I was a shaver at Eton and never tipped me, and gave me a beastly book called ‘The Christian Year.’ Make it all as deuced annoyin’ to both of ’em as you can. Lord, what a pother they’ll find all my affairs in--that’s a comfort.” And it was a genuine tonic and cordial to him to think how, after his decease, all his sins and embarrassments would continue to circle like mosquitos around the heads of his trustees and executors.