A CONSULTATION.
Mr. William Twining’s office was situated in one of those quiet old
London streets, where that peace and independence of thought and action,
and leisure, moreover,—for thought and action unobtainable at any money
in what half-crazed sentimental folks delight to call the “tranquil”
country, may be procured for a not extravagant rental; and there he
reflected on cases, and received such clients as Heaven sent him, in a
thankful spirit, and pondered over their stories with a just one.
He was, in brief, that which it is the universal fashion to call a
rarity,—to wit, an honest attorney,—who, if he did occasionally make out
tolerably long bills, worked for and earned their amounts fairly—a thing
frequently not the case with other callings in far better odour than
law.
No one ever hears a quack doctor cried down. Did you, dear reader, ever
happen to be present when a high-minded solicitor—there are such in the
world—was praised up? Mr. Twining, at all events, was a kind, quaint,
dry, conscientious man of law and business. His father, a rigid
Presbyterian of the strictest Calvinistic principles, had gravely shaken
his head when he heard William wished to become what he had always
considered a sort of relation of the Evil One.
“Not an attorney!” he exclaimed; “no honest man _can_ be that!” but
William replied,
“I will be an attorney, father, if you please; I am honest, and, with
God’s blessing, I mean to remain so: the profession is no worse than
many—a vast deal better than some;” and thus he started in life, true of
heart, firm in principle: and wealth sufficient, and a respected name,
came to be his ere long; and, before old Mr. Twining died, he was often
heard humbly thanking Providence that, let who else disgrace his
calling, his son William was, in word and thought and deed, an
honourable man—an upright, honest lawyer.
At whose door Colin Saunders, on the Monday afternoon following his
arrival in town, tapped in a manner peculiar to himself, with two of the
finger joints of his right hand, producing from those simple substitutes
for a knocker a sound precisely similar to the cracking of nuts; which
sound attracting, as was intended, the attention of the solicitor, that
gentleman exclaimed, without, however, raising his eyes from a parchment
deed he was perusing, glorious with old English letters, and plentifully
interspersed with Latin words, “Come in!” whereupon Colin did come in,
and, cautiously closing the door behind him, stood, hat in hand,
surveying the attorney from head to foot, waiting till that individual
should address him.
“Well,” said Mr. Twining at length, “what can I do for you?”
“Maybe much, maybe little,” answered Colin, making a sort of bow to the
questioner, not out of respect for his position or his profession, but
because of a kind of preference he had conceived for him; “folks ca’ ye
Mr. William Twining, don’t they?”
“All that know me do at any rate,” returned the solicitor, looking in
his turn intently at the hard honest Scotch face, and the curiously-cut
clothes, and the long grey hair of Mina’s faithful, humble friend.
“Are you busy the noo, sir,” inquired that personage.
“Not particularly,—why?”
“Because if you were I’d mak’ free to wait till ye weren’t, that’s all,”
said Saunders; “I want your entire understandings, sir,—not your ears
only, but your whole head; and if you have to read anything over, sir,
I——”
“No, no,” interrupted Mr. Twining, pushing away the parchment; “No, no,
I can attend to you entirely, and I will, so pray proceed: you will be
able to talk better sitting; there is a chair.”
“I’m not much of a talker, sir,” premised Saunders, taking possession of
the seat, however; “holding with St. James that in the tongue lieth a
world of iniquity; it’s a wonderful thing, sir, that it lasts longer
than our legs, and yet is used twice as much, seeing that they are
sometimes still, and it never is. I am not much of a talker in a general
way, but when I once do begin I can hold out just as long standing as
sitting; but as you are so good, I will take it easy;” and, suiting the
action to the word, he put his hat carefully underneath the chair,
crossed both hands on the top of the stick he carried, rested his chin
thereon after his favourite fashion, and peered curiously at the
solicitor,—who, sitting behind his desk, calmly surveyed his new client,
whose mood and manner somehow suited him better than a more servile one
could possibly have done.
“Do you know what brought me here?” said Colin, at length.
“Your business, I presume,” answered the attorney.
“_That_ brought me to London, but might have taken me into any other
office in it,” retorted Saunders.
“True,” replied Mr. Twining; “some one told you to come here, perhaps.”
“No one,” was the response.
“Well then, fate sent you,” said the solicitor.
“Fate and myself,” answered Colin, approvingly, “and I think, from what
I have put thegither, that ye will ‘do’ my work the way I want it done.
You see, when first I set out, I said to myself, ‘Now I know nobody here
and nobody knows me; I can pay well, but I must be treated well;’” and I
thought and I thought how ’twas best to walk and where to walk to, and I
determined to go to no second-rate place, but just to the best, and I
asked my son-in-law where the ablest attorneys lived, and he told me;
and so I went into one grand office, and there were three young
gentlemen, and, whenever they set eyes on me, they began to sneer and
laugh.
“‘Could I see Mr. Pickstock?’ I asks.
“‘What do you want with him, my friend?’ says the biggest and boldest.
“‘That’s my business,’ I answers.
“‘It’s mine, if I choose to make it so,’ he says, getting angry.
“‘Two folks have to say words to that,’ I says, walking out and
thinking, ‘If those are the clerks, the master won’t do for me.’
“I paced on and on—for, oh! sir, the streets here are an awful length,
and places are a dreadful piece asunder—till I came to another office;
goes in there: only one sharp looking chiel behind the desk.
“‘I want to speak a few words with Mr. Cragnell, if you please, sir.’
“‘What’s your business?’ was the first word.
“‘Oh!’ says I, ‘that’s asking, but not telling;’ and leaves him, too.
The next was little better; said Mr. Blackader was busy, and that he
would do just as well.
“‘Maybe so,’ I says, ‘since neither of ye will suit me;’ and so I went
to well nigh a dozen, till I lighted on you.
“‘Could I see Mr. Twining, sir?’ I asked of that civil-spoken young
gentleman below; and, without a grin, or crooked word, or look, he said,
“‘Walk up stairs; first door to the left.’
“‘All right,’ thinks I, and here I am, sir.”
“Thanks to my son,” said Mr. Twining quietly.
“Son or clerk, it didn’t matter to me,” said Colin authoritatively; “it
showed me the kind of place and person I was coming to spend my money in
and on; and now, sir, having just told you that to start with, I will go
on with my story: shall I tell you the whole of it, sir?”
The attorney hastily reflected what matters he had in hand, and, finding
the result in favour of half-an-hour’s broad Scotch, he answered,
“If necessary, yes.”
“Well, it’s necessary in one way and not in another,” said his client;
“it’s not just needful for the ‘law;’ but still, if I began at the
beginning, and told all right through, I could get on better, sir.”
“In that case, you had best make a sure commencement, that you may not
have to go back again,” said Mr. Twining; and Saunders, after a benign
“That’s just what I think,” pushed a stray lock of grey hair back from
his face and proceeded thus:
“I needn’t tell you, sir, that I’m Scotch, for if I were inclined to
deny my country, my tongue wouldn’t let me. I was born in the Highlands,
and worked, from the time I was but a bit of a callant, about the garden
of a gentleman who only had two faults in the world that ever I heard
of,—a large family and but little to keep them with.
“Well, he died, and the daughters married, and some of the sons went
abroad and died too; and his brother, the head of the clan (and a proud
old clan they were come from), took one lad, the youngest of all, home,
and, because I had been so fond of my dead master and so long about him
when the old place was broken up and the family scattered, the laird
took me also.
“I served him faithfully, both for love and from duty; and he educated
his nephew and put him forward, as if he had been his own son; and,
because the lad’s head was full of nonsense and his heart of courage, he
let him enter the army and go away from us all, who were proud and fond
of him; far away from the blue Highland mountains and the beautiful
lakes and the heather and the moors and the place where he and his were
respected and known; away from all, to push his fortune. I think I see
him now,” added the old man drawing the back of his hand over his eyes,
“dressed, for the first time, in uniform, looking so brave and young and
handsome, that morning when he came out to bid me good bye: I believe,
sir, I was fonder of him than I ever was of any one else in the world
almost; and I had reason for it, for he was the finest and the best
gentleman ever wore a Highland bonnet: his clan were, every man of them,
kind and good and true; and, because I had known him from a child, I
felt proud of him, and thought he was the kindest and the truest of all.
But, sir, as I was saying, he went; and years and years passed away and
we never heard much about him, till it turned out he was going to be
married to an English lady, not half so well born as himself, but twice
as rich. God, in whose sight we are all equal, forbid that I would speak
against any one for not having the real ancient blood in their veins;
and I doubt not the gentlewoman’s father was a very worthy man in his
way, and there was no question but that money would have been very
useful to a gentleman who, besides himself and his sword, had no fortune
but a very small one. Still we all did think, every one of us who had an
interest in the honour of the clan, that Master Allan might have looked
higher, and that we would all have rather have welcomed home a Scotch
bride, even if she had little gold to her tocher; however, he was not
going to marry to please us, but himself, and so he did marry the lady,
as it turned out afterwards, without her father’s consent, who, at
first, would give her no money or blessing, or countenance or anything:
and what a sore heart it gave all of us at home to hear our dear young
gentleman had been looked coldly on by a London trader; we wondered
Master Allan had not more pride than to put his birth in the scales
against riches, more particularly in England, where gold always weighs
heavier than blood; but love does a deal, Mr. Twining, wi’ the young and
the foolish.
“Her father’s displeasure did not last for long; how could it? and,
after he had cooled a bit, he allowed them a handsome income, and
everybody said, when he died, Mr. Allan would be as rich as a prince;
but things did not turn out so, for at his death, there was scarcely
enough left to pay his debts, and our young gentleman did not get a
single penny: that happened about three years after the wedding.
“But, mercifully, he did not then need money, for a rich relation of his
made a will, giving the young officer a beautiful estate near Loch
Lomond, and five hundred a year and some other things besides; and then
he came home, with his wife, to Scotland, and retired from the army, and
lived sometimes in Edinburgh, oftener near the Loch; and, because his
heart never changed or cooled, he did not forget me, but said, on
account of my having served his father, if I would like to serve him, I
might make my home under the shadow of his roof-tree, for that, so long
as he had a place, I should work about it, and that, so long as he had a
sixpence, I should never want: ah! there were few on the earth like him.
Am I tiring you, sir?”
“No,” answered Mr. Twining, “not at all;” and he spoke the truth. The
old man’s somewhat prosy tale did not weary him, for the evidence every
word bore of steady sterling attachment; the strength of affection and
kindness, which had joined the master and the servant; the breadth of
consideration and love, which had power to span the great gap lying
betwixt the high and the low, the gentleman and the labourer, and to
knit these two—the representatives of each class—so strongly together,
impressed the attorney wonderfully; and, besides, Colin rather
interested him. He wondered whither all this was tending, and so he had
temper and patience and kindness to listen attentively to each sentence,
as Saunders proceeded.
“I should tell you, sir, that, long before I left the old laird’s place,
I married a quiet careful young woman from the nearest town; and, in
going backwards and forwards to see her, I came to know a family,
concerning one of whom I have a good deal to say after a bit. Their name
was Beaver; they were not real Scotch people, I think, but that has
nothing to say to my story: they had lived neighbours to my
mother-in-law for some time, and there was a sort of friendship among
them all, so I got to know them.
“There were an old grandmother, two or three daughters, and a son’s
widow, with no end of children, all living under one roof, when I first
married; but, in course of time, they scattered, and one Margaret, the
prettiest and boldest of all, who had such a temper nobody could agree
with her, went off to a cousin at Paisley, and became apprenticed to the
millinery trade and got on well, at least, so her grandmother told us;
and the summit of their pride came when the poor girl married an uppish
young clerk, a mere lad, who was in a small branch bank in Paisley, an
Englishman, and, as some said, a gentleman.
“If he had been a hangman I should almost have pitied him, for she had a
tongue such as no sensible fellow cares to have always at his ear, and a
temper it was ill to thole, and a spirit for grandeur and finery it was
hard to satisfy; but they were as proud of the match as could be, and
Margaret made him get leave of absence, and went to show him to her
friends in the Highlands; and when she found my wife and I and the
children had flitted to Loch Lomond, she brought him round to see us and
the place, and asked us to go and see them at Paisley. They were just
married then, and she was so proud of him that pride of station had no
time to grow for a while: and, though she did give herself some airs,
still she had not come to be above staying with a poor gardener like me;
and, as for the bridegroom, he was just, to all appearance, a slip of a
love-sick, good-natured, conceited lad: but I saw there was the making
of a real bad one in him; my wife said I was ‘set’ against Mr. Maxwell
because he was English,—but it was not that. I like an honest man, let
him be born on what side of the Tweed he will, and I cannot thole a
double word, no matter in how broad Scotch it is spoken; there was
cunning about him,—the making of a real bad one, as I remarked before,
and so it turned out. I went once to see a relative of my own at
Paisley, and when there I met young Maxwell and his wife walking: she
was as fine as any real born lady, and he as proud as the best earl in
the land; they kept up a great appearance, but people said they did not
live happily together, and wondered where they got the money. The next
thing I heard was that he had run off over head and ears in debt, having
been suspected of stealing from the bank for a long time, and that there
were warrants out for his apprehension. He was never caught, however;
for months afterwards word came from Yorkshire that a man had been found
dead in a ditch by the wayside, and, from letters and papers in his
possession, there could be no doubt of his being Maxwell: the bank sent
people to the place and sifted the matter, and it all turned out just as
had been said; and Margaret, his widow, having quitted Paisley and gone
south, nobody knew or cared where, the whole thing was forgotten. I
never heard a word about either of them until a day or two since, from
that time to this; but please you, sir, to keep them in mind for all
that.”
The lawyer, whose attention had seemed to Colin to be somewhat flagging,
smiled at this caution, and resigned himself to a patient hearing of the
whole case. He could not conceive to what possible end all this was
tending; he had endeavoured to discover the connection between a dead
clerk and a Highland gentleman, but in vain, so he waited for further
explanation, twisting a pencil in the interim between his fingers to
beguile the progress of the narrative: he wondered when the old man
would get it finished; but no way appalled at _his_ share of the task,
Colin resumed.
“My young master, as I have told you, came back to Scotland with his
wife and one child, a son; I don’t think there was a deal of love in his
heart for the English lady, though they got on well enough; and, indeed,
there was little in her to love,—a useless, handless, headless, foolish
woman, who cared for nothing but driving about from morning till night,
or lying on the sofa, or receiving company; she sat up half the night
and slept half the day; there was no harm in her, and there was no good;
she was no one for Captain Allan to fall in love with and marry, only he
did both, and then he came not to love her a great deal, but just poured
out his whole heart, after a manner, on a girl who was born under the
shadow of Ben Lomond; he was far too fond of her, far, if such a thing
be possible, he idolized that child, Miss Mina——”
The old man paused, and once again Mr. Twining’s interest became
aroused, for he noted how the speaker’s voice quivered as he uttered the
last few words. Well it might, when he thought of that period in her
life and of the last time he had beheld her, of the love which was felt
for her then, of the hate cherished against her since, of her childhood
and her womanhood,—well it might.
“I don’t want to say what I thought of and felt for her, for it makes a
child o’ me,” said Colin, mastering his emotion; “but I saw her grow up
under my eyes; I loved the sight of her coming across the gardens with
her long hair flying behind her in the breeze; she was my master’s
darling,—always with him, always at his side; wherever he went she went,
and he spoiled her, and made her as wayward and as hard to turn from her
own road as child ever was, and if she could have been altogether
spoiled she would; but there was always good in her, and she had a shy,
quiet nature, and a loving, guileless heart; and you might have
known—though her home was such a happy one, and her father so proud and
fond of her—by the strange thoughtful sayings she had, and a mournful,
deep look in her eyes, that she was born for trouble of some sort: she
has had enough, one time and another, at any rate, to make her look
sorrowful now.
“She was still but a small fairy bit of a thing when death and ruin came
to that beautiful place,—the captain died; and then it turned out that
anxiety killed him, for he had speculated and lost, and the creditors
got all, to the very furniture; and the widow and the two children and
myself went back to the Highlands to the old laird’s place. His wife and
all his family were dead, and, as he was living alone there with just
one grandson, you might have thought the lady would like to stay there
always; but she had a rich half-brother in London here, and so, when
Miss Mina got better of a fever we all expected she’d have died of, they
set off for England, and for years and years I never set eyes on the
child of my dear master again.
“But the laird got letters, saying first how Mr. Malcolm (the son) had
entered the navy, and then how he had left it; and when he was quite a
young gentleman he and his sister came to the Highlands on a visit to
their uncle. Except that she was taller I did not think her a bit
altered, and neither she was; and I hoped she would have stayed there
altogether, for the laird’s grandson was a fine gentleman, and good and
clever,—but, somehow, they did not make it up; and so, when a month or
two had gone by, they left us all again; and that autumn my young master
married a great heiress,—a very handsome young lady, daughter to a
General, with no end of grand friends and great connexions; it was a
very good match for him,—so everybody said. Maybe so; I did not think
it.
“It was not very long after that till news came to the Highlands of the
death of the rich uncle I spoke of in London. Even his sister, it
appeared, had always thought he was a bachelor, and so expected he would
leave all to the two children; therefore you may guess the blow it was
when a wife and son started up to claim everything: there was no will,
the marriage could not be disputed, though it appeared they had lived on
bad terms for years, and that he had only kept her from coming forward
publicly by giving her large sums of money, and threatening to
disinherit the boy if she made any stir. The widow of my old master and
his two children were turned out of the house they had looked on as
their own,—out into the world, with just one thousand pounds between
them and the workhouse.
“You know, sir, how long a thousand pounds will last when used by a
spendthrift lad and an extravagant, heedless woman: they made great
speed through that, the only fortune my dear old master had been able to
leave to his wife; and her health, which had long been failing, getting
worse as the money got lower, they all started off once again for the
Highlands, to the house of the chief of their clan,—the one relative
they had in the world whose door was not shut upon them.
“I was not there when they arrived, for the new lady and I never
‘sorted’ well together; and, besides, I had a daughter married in
London, and my wife was dead, and the rest of my children, all but the
youngest, and so, when Mr. Malcolm got me a place with a friend of his
in Lincolnshire, I packed up and left the Highlands, and came to
England; but I heard first one thing and then another about them that
made my heart ache. The mother went quietly to her grave, and, after a
bit, Miss Mina and her brother left the Highlands—which news never
surprised me at all—and came to a friend in London; and the finish of
all was, the laird’s death after that. For a year there was a sort of
dead calm in their affairs; but they were drifting, drifting on the
breakers,—poverty and starvation. Suddenly, all at once, word was
written to me, that the young lady was going to be married to the eldest
son of the gentleman I served in Lincolnshire.”
“Well,” said Mr. Twining, as the old man paused.
“It was not well, sir,” replied Colin; “it was ill, and I knew it: I
knew what kind of a home the only one she could have for years would be;
I knew the nature of the people she was coming among; I knew her temper,
I knew her heart, I knew everything but the length and breadth and depth
of the love the man she was proposing to marry bore her,—all; and so I
travelled here, and I prayed and begged, and I warned and I counselled;
but I might as well, or better, have stayed at home, for the more I said
against her taking him for a husband, the more set she grew to become
his wife. I told her she had been a wayward child, and she answered she
was wayward still; and so, sir, she married and came home to misery and
sorrow and wretchedness untellable. You don’t know what a place it was:
I would very nearly as soon have seen her in her coffin as wandering
about it, pale and careworn and ghost-like; but it was so fated,—home
she came.”
Saunders arose from his seat as he brought this sentence to a
conclusion.
“Surely we have not got to a finish yet,” thought Mr. Twining; and he
was correct. Colin had only risen that he might get a little closer to
the lawyer, who was becoming fairly wearied and mystified by the long
and apparently unmeaning detail.
“I do not know,” continued the Scotchman, “I never could yet get to
know, what brought things to a climax; but one night, about three years
after her marriage, she came to my cottage door in despair, and told me
she was leaving the place for ever, and then she ran away, carrying her
child with her. I followed my dear young lady, and tried all I could to
get her to turn but she would not; and she left husband, home and
everything but her daughter behind, and went away all alone: nobody but
myself guessed where, and she had bound me up not to tell, and I could
not, after I had promised, break my word, could I, sir?
“Changes came about the place: an aunt died, and all her gold went to
her brother, Miss Mina’s husband’s father; you understand, sir. He died,
and, passing over his two sons, left every shilling he had in the world
and every acre of ground, excepting a swampy, entailed, valueless place,
to the eldest boy of the youngest, who had just come home from India,
bringing a wife with him who could make sunshine in a prison and a
heaven even upon earth: God bless her sweet face, I say, and, I am sure
hundreds have said the same before me.”
“And has the wife of the eldest, that Mina you speak of, never returned
to her husband?” inquired Mr. Twining.
“Never, sir; and she ought, for his heart is bound up in her, and it
would be a happier home now: she ought to seek him in his poverty, for
he will never seek her; she ought, indeed.”
“And is that what you require my assistance for?” demanded Mr. Twining,
somewhat disappointed at the full stop Colin thought fit to make at this
point.
“No, sir,” he responded, “though I’d be very glad if you could bring it
to pass; that is not it. I told you to remember Margaret Maxwell.”
“I have not forgotten her,” said the solicitor.
“That’s well,” answered Colin, “for she is still living, and turns out
to be the wife of that uncle I spoke about.”
“Curious coincidence,” remarked Mr. Twining; “but I do not see what that
has to do with the business.”
“Don’t you, sir?” answered Colin; “very likely not, but I will show you:
I’m not much of a lawyer, but still I think if Maxwell were proved to
have been alive at the time of her marriage to the other, it would make
that marriage just about equal to none at all, wouldn’t it?”
“Certainly; but how can you prove that?” demanded Mr. Twining, becoming
at once professionally interested in the affair: “I thought you spoke of
Maxwell as dead.”
“So I did,” said Colin, “so I did; but, within the last four years,
since the death of the second husband, I have seen the first one alive.”
“You are positive as to that fact?”
“Certain.”
“You could not be mistaken as to his identity?”
“I should know him among ten thousand, and, what was more, he knew me.”
“Then you want me to get back her uncle’s fortune for this Miss Mina, as
you call her; that’s the summing up of the whole affair.”
Colin did not answer this query directly; but, producing a bottle from
some unfathomable hiding-place in his garments, held it up before the
solicitor’s eyes, and demanded if he saw it.
It was a pint bottle; and Mr. Twining’s sight was of the clearest, so he
answered, “Yes.”
“Do you know what’s in it?” asked the Scotchman.
“No; how should I?” returned the attorney in some surprise.
“It’s full of money,” explained Saunders. “I gave one just like this to
my eldest daughter on her wedding-day, and I have been storing up this
one for my youngest; but if you will make my young lady a great heiress,
if you will get her justice, and bring some sort of joy to her heart,
you shall have every guinea that’s in it, every one, and Jessie shall
either do without a portion, or else Miss Mina give her one. I do not
want ye, even now, to listen to me for nothing; I know your time is your
capital just as much as mine, though you are a gentleman while I’m but a
poor Highlander;” and, before the attorney could interpose to prevent
him, Saunders knocked the neck off the bottle and proceeded to pick out
a portion of its contents.
“Keep your money, keep your money, my honest fellow,” said Mr. Twining,
pushing aside the proffered amount; “I would not take a sixpence from
you, if you had talked for a day: it is not so often I hear a tale which
raises my opinion of my fellow creatures, that I need ask payment for
hearkening to one. I will undertake the cause with my whole soul, and
try to sift it to the best of my ability; if I succeed, your ‘young
lady’ can either pay me my costs or not, just as she pleases; if not,
believe me I shall mourn almost as much as you at the failure of my
endeavours; but take back your daughter’s portion untouched. I hope the
child of such a father may meet with some one worthy of her, and,
instead of making her dowry any less, I had rather make it more.”
“Well,” said Saunders, after a perplexed pause, “if ever I heard the
like o’ that; why, since I was but a bit of a callant, it was always
dinned into my ears that no lawyer could refuse a fee.”
This remark was delivered with such perfect _naïveté_, it was such a
genuine expression of surprise, that Mr. Twining could not avoid
laughing outright.
“Money is a very tempting thing,” he replied, “very tempting, I admit;
but still there are things even lawyers can admire more,—a sterling,
honest, faithful heart like yours, my friend; and truth and
disinterested attachment, in times of trouble and adversity. This young
lady you speak of must surely be good, to have awakened such a feeling
of devotion; yet still I do not think she ought to have left her
husband; I cannot approve of that.”
“She was wrong, I know,” pleaded Colin, “because it is what no woman
ought to do; she was wrong in the deed, but I know her so well, that I
feel sure her heart was right all the while,—she did it for the best.
And oh! sir, if ye had seen the home, ye’d wonder she was able to stand
it so long; and if ye’d seen her, your soul would have sorrowed for
her,—indeed it would, many and many a day.”
“I daresay it might,” said the lawyer; “but now to business: I want the
names of all these people to enable me to proceed in the affair with any
hope of success, and their places of residence, past and present;—first,
your own.”
“Colin Saunders, sir, who served the Frazer clan for well nigh fifty
years; my first master was Mr. Malcolm Frazer of Duncairn; my second,
his brother, the Laird of Craigmaver; my third, Captain Allan Frazer of
Glenfiord, and then I went back to the old laird again. My late employer
was Sir Ernest Claude Ivraine of Paradise, in Lincolnshire; and his son,
the present Sir Ernest, is husband of Miss Mina, Captain Allan Frazer’s
only daughter.”
“Oh! if she were daughter-in-law to the late baronet, I could forgive
fifty flights,” said Mr. Twining; “I have heard of him before.”
“I’m sure you never heard any good, at any rate,” remarked Saunders;
“and Margaret Maxwell is now called Mrs. Merapie, and her first husband
is known as Mr. Alfred Westwood; his office, four years ago, was at
Wapping, and his wife lives in Belerma Square.”
The solicitor jotted all this down on a slip of paper; and, then putting
on his hat, said to his client, “Come again at the same hour
to-morrow,—I shall want to see you then, most probably.”
Having uttered which brief sentence he nodded to Colin, and forthwith
proceeded, _con amore_, to investigate the business, and put matters in
train for a satisfactory result.