rm hand; while the
elder sister was content to bow, and thank him for coming, and hope that
he was well. As yet it had not become proper for a gentleman, visiting
ladies, to yawn, and throw himself into the nearest chair, and cross
his legs, and dance one foot, and ask how much the toy-terrier cost.
Mr. Jellicorse made a fine series of bows, not without a scrape or two,
which showed his goodly calf; and after that he waited for the gracious
invitation to sit down.

"If I understood your letter clearly," Mistress Yordas began, when these
little rites were duly accomplished, "you have something important
to tell us concerning our poor property here. A small property, Mr.
Jellicorse, compared with that of the Duke of Lunedale, but perhaps a
little longer in one family."

"The duke is a new-fangled interloper," replied hypocritical Jellicorse,
though no other duke was the husband of the duchess of whom he indited
daily; "properties of that sort come and go, and only tradesmen notice
it. Your estates have been longer in the seisin of one family, madam,
than any other in the Riding, or perhaps in Yorkshire."

"We never seized them!" cried Mrs. Carnaby, being sensitive as to
ancestral thefts, through tales about cattle-lifting. "You must be aware
that they came to us by grant from the Crown, or even before there was
any Crown to grant them."

"I beg your pardon for using a technical word, without explaining it.
Seisin is a legal word, which simply means possession, or rather
the bodily holding of a thing, and is used especially of corporeal
hereditaments. You ladies have seisin of this house and lands, although
you never seized them."

"The last thing we would think of doing," answered Mrs. Carnaby, who was
more impulsive than her sister, also less straightforward. "How often
we have wished that our poor lost brother had not been deprived of them!
But our father's will was sacred, and you told us we were helpless. We
struggled, as you know; but we could do nothing."

"That is the question which brought me here," the lawyer said, very
quietly, at the same time producing a small roll of parchment sealed in
cartridge paper. "Last week I discovered a document which I am forced
to submit to your judgment. Shall I read it to you, or tell its purport
briefly?"

"Whatever it may be, it can not in any way alter our conclusions. Our
conclusions have never varied, however deeply they may have grieved us.
We were bound to do just