In one other house besides, Val and his concerns were productive of some little tumult of feeling--not the least important of the many eddies with which his stream of life was involved. Mr Pringle was almost as much excited about the approaching conflict as Lord Eskside. He saw in it opportunities for carrying out his own scheme, which he called exposure of fraud, but which to others much more resembled the vengeance of a disappointed man. He was the bosom friend of the eminent lawyer who meant to contest Eskside in the Liberal interest, and had no small share in influencing him to this step. His own acquaintance with the county, in the position of Lord Eskside’s heir-presumptive in past days, had given him considerable advantages and much information which a stranger could not easily command; and with silent vehemence he prepared himself for the conflict--contemplating one supreme stroke of revenge--or, as he preferred to think, contemplating a full exposure to the world of the infamous conspiracy against his rights and those of his children, from which the county also was now about to suffer. He did not speak freely to his family of these intentions, for neither his wife nor his children were in harmony with him on the subject; but this fact, instead of inducing him to reconsider a matter which appeared to other eyes in so different a light, increased the violence of his feelings, just in proportion to the necessity he felt for concealing them. It was even an additional grievance against Valentine, and the old people who had set Valentine up as their certain successor, that the lad had secured the friendship of his enemy’s own family. Sandy, who was by this time a hard-working young advocate, less fanciful and more certain of success than his father--though a very good son, and very respectful of his parents, had a way of changing the subject when the Eskside business was spoken of, which cut Mr Pringle to the quick. He could see that his son considered him a kind of monomaniac on this subject; and indeed there was sometimes very serious talk between Sandy and his mother about this _idée fixe_ which had taken hold upon the father’s mind.