LAWRENCE LOFTEWALDE. CHAPTER I. "An inhuman wretch, Incapable of pity, void and empty * One that slept in the contriving of sin, Light of ear, bloody of hand." SHAKESPEARE. How shall I present to you, my children, an adequate idea of the iniquity contained in the defence to as fair and strong a claim of right to an honourable name and fortune as was ever set up? "The enemy assumed, as the bases of their arguments, suppositions the most monstrous that the humàn mind ever conceived. VOL. III. 35 My father was taxed with direct fraud; my mother's honour was indirectly, although unmistakably, impugned. That I was illegitimate in the eye of the law, Sir Furnaby Splotch declared he would be able to show beyond all question whatever. "Your lordship,' he said, 'touched closely upon the position which I am about to take up when you asked my learned friend on the other side the question relating to Miss Porchester's knowledge of the rank of her husband. For the sake of argument, I will at once admit that she did go through a ceremony of marriage with a certain gentleman; nay, further, I am quite willing to admit that that gentleman was Sir Lawrence Loftewalde, of Harnisham Castle. I will go even one step farther than that, and admit that the young man now in the court is the son of these two-Sir Lawrence Loftewalde and Miss Helen Porchester, or Mr. and Mrs. Launcelot Lorrimer, as the plaintiff has put them.' "I wish you had admitted all this at the outset,' remarked the judge. 'It would have simplified matters very considerably, and have prevented a great, and, as it now seems, an unnecessary waste of time.' ་ "I was desirous, me lud,' returned Sir Furnaby, of avoiding, if I could, the raising of a very unpleasant issue. I would have preferred seeing the plaintiff's case going off upon an informality to being obliged to establish the grave view which we take of the relations of the baronet and Miss Porchester. The issues which we are now obliged to raise we thought to have avoided, but we find ourselves I say it candidly-in extremis, and we have no other alternative than to resort to the most unpleasant and drastic expedient of showing that the marriage of these two individuals was void in law, and that their offspring is consequently illegitimate.' "Oh, I was not prepared for this, my children," observed poor Loftewalde, parenthetically. "I had seen something of human villainy, but never to such lengths as this did I think it possible for human villainy to go. How was it that the court-house did not fall upon-that its walls held apart from and did not crush-this horrid libeller of the dead: this foul and wretched viper, whose slaver was being scattered broadcast o'er the memory of her whom I knew to be an angel? Wrongs and their paid defenders do not meet with |