deal at this moment if her feeble husband
had not always lived in dread of her temper and her tyranny, so that he might
have been fond of her now. She felt herself loveless; if she was important to
any one, it was only to her old waiting-woman Denner.
 

                                   Chapter 36

 »Are these things then necessities?
 Then let us meet them like necessities.«
                                                           Shakspeare: Henry IV.
 
 See now the virtue living in a word!
 Hobson will think of swearing it was noon
 When he saw Dobson at the May-day fair,
 To prove poor Dobson did not rob the mail.
 'Tis neighbourly to save a neighbour's neck:
 What harm is lying when you mean no harm?
 But say 'tis perjury, then Hobson quakes -
 He'll none of perjury.
Thus words embalm
 The conscience of mankind; and Roman laws
 Bring still a conscience to poor Hobson's aid.
 
Few men would have felt otherwise than Harold Transome felt, if, having a
reversion tantamount to possession of a fine estate, carrying an association
with an old name and considerable social importance, they were suddenly informed
that there was a person who had a legal right to deprive them of these
advantages; that person's right having never been contemplated by any one as
more than a chance, and being quite unknown to himself. In ordinary cases a
shorter possession than Harold's family had enjoyed was allowed by the law to
constitute an indefeasible right; and if in rare and peculiar instances the law
left the possessor of a long inheritance exposed to deprivation as a consequence
of old obscure transactions, the moral reasons for giving legal validity to the
title of long occupancy were not the less strong. Nobody would have said that
Harold was bound to hunt out this alleged remainder-man and urge his rights upon
him; on the contrary, all the world would have laughed at such conduct, and he
would have been thought an interesting patient for a mad-doctor. The unconscious
remainder-man was probably much better off left in his original station: Harold
would not have been called upon to consider his existence, if it had not been
presented to him in the shape of a threat from one who had power to execute the
threat.
    In fact, what he would have done had the circumstances been different was
much clearer than what he should choose to do or feel himself compelled to do in
the actual crisis. He would not have been disgraced if, on a valid claim being
urged, he had got his lawyers to fight it out for him on the chance of eluding
the claim