the face of Joseph Mason as he did so, and then turning round to the attorney he said, 'I presume your client will understand me now.'
'The estate is yours, Mr. Mason,' said Round. 'You have nothing to do but to take possession of it.'
'What do you mean?' said Mason, turning round upon Furnival.
'Exactly what I say. Your half brother Lucius surrenders to you the estate.'
'Without payment?'
'Yes; without payment. On his doing so you will of course absolve him from all liability on account of the proceeds of the property while in his hands.'
'That will be a matter of course,' said Mr. Round.
'Then she has robbed me,' said Mason, jumping up to his feet. 'By ———, the will was forged after all.'
'Mr. Mason,' said Mr. Round, 'if you have a spark of generosity in you, you will accept the offer made to you without asking any question. By no such questioning can you do yourself any good,—nor can you do that poor lady any harm.'
'I knew it was so,' he said loudly, and as he spoke he twice walked the length of the room. 'I knew it was so;—twenty years ago I said the same. She forged the will. I ask you, as my lawyer, Mr. Round,—did she not forge the will herself?'
'I shall answer no such question, Mr. Mason.'
'Then by heavens I'll expose you. If I spend the whole value of the estate in doing it I'll expose you, and have her punished yet. The slippery villain! For twenty years she has robbed me.'
'Mr. Mason, you are forgetting yourself in your passion,' said Mr. Furnival. 'What you have to look for now is the recovery of the property.' But here Mr. Furnival showed that he had not made himself master of Joseph Mason's character.
'No,' shouted the angry man;—'no, by heaven. What I have first to look to is her punishment, and that of those who have assisted her. I knew she had done it,—and Dockwrath knew it. Had I trusted him, she would now have been in gaol.'
Mr. Furnival and Mr. Round were both desirous of having the matter quietly arranged, and with this view were willing to put up with much. The man had been ill used. When he declared for the fortieth time that he had been robbed for twenty years, they could not deny it. When with horrid oaths he swore that that will had been a forgery, they could not contradict him. When he reviled the laws of his country, which had done so much to facilitate the escape of a criminal, they had no arguments to prove that he was wrong. They bore with him in his rage, hoping that a sense of his own self-interest might induce him to listen to reason. But it was
