all, have been no complete evidence?' she asked. 'If I had been the
executrix I would not have attempted it! As I was not, I know very
little about how the business was pushed through. In a very unseemly
way, I think.'

'Well, no,' said Mr. Cecil, feeling himself morally called upon to defend
legal procedure from such imputations. 'It was done in the usual way in
all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. The evidence,
such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, your
husband's cousins; and the servants who had been with him deposed to his
death with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. Their error was,
not that somebody died--for somebody did die at the time affirmed--but
that they mistook one person for another; the person who died being not
Sir Blount Constantine. The court was of opinion that the evidence led
up to a reasonable inference that the deceased was actually Sir Blount,
and probate was granted on the strength of it. As there was a doubt
about the exact day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swear
that he died on or after the date last given of his existence--which, in
spite of their error then, has really come true, now, of course.'

'They little think what they have done to me by being so ready to swear!'
she murmured.

Mr. Cecil, supposing her to allude only to the pecuniary straits in which
she had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a year before
its due time, said, 'True. It has been to your ladyship's loss, and to
their gain. But they will make ample restitution, no doubt: and all will
be wound up satisfactorily.'

Lady Constantine was far from explaining that this was not her meaning;
and, after some further conversation of a purely technical nature, Mr.
Cecil left her presence.

When she was again unencumbered with the necessity of exhibiting a proper
bearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by the undue
haste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a pressure quite
inappreciable beside the greater gravity of her personal position. What
was her position as legatee to her situation as a woman? Her face
crimsoned with a flush which she was almost ashamed to show to the
daylight, as she hastily penned the following note to Swithin at
Greenwich--certainly one of the most informal documents she had ever
written.

'WELLAND, _Thursday_.

'O Swithin, my dear Swithin, what I have to tell you is so s