Learning that there is a line of baronets of this name, every pretender to the family would be apt to call a son Wycherly." "The line will shortly be ended, brother," returned Sir Wycherly, sighing.

"I wish you might be mistaken; and, after all, Tom shouldn't prove to be that _filius_ you call him." Mr.Baron Wychecombe, as much from _esprit de corps_ as from moral principle, was a man of strict integrity, in all things that related to _meum_ and _tuum_.

He was particularly rigid in his notions concerning the transmission of real estate, and the rights of primogeniture.

The world had taken little interest in the private history of a lawyer, and his sons having been born before his elevation to the bench, he passed with the public for a widower, with a family of promising boys.

Not one in a hundred of his acquaintances even, suspected the fact; and nothing would have been easier for him, than to have imposed on his brother, by inducing him to make a will under some legal mystification or other, and to have caused Tom Wychecombe to succeed to the property in question, by an indisputable title.