The first Mystification in the book is that which signalised Miss Stirling Graham’s success in deceiving Mr Jeffrey, the eminent practising lawyer, and at the same time editor of the _Edinburgh Review_. Jeffrey had been introduced to the lady, and had heard of her cleverness in personation. Meeting her afterwards at the theatre, he said he should like to see her _take in_ some one. A promise was given that he should have that pleasure very soon. Likely enough, the busy advocate thought nothing more of the matter. On the second evening afterwards, accompanied by Miss Helen Carnegy of Craigo as her daughter, Miss Stirling Graham, who at the time had been on a visit to Lord Gillies, stopped at Mr Jeffrey’s door, 92 George Street, between five and six o’clock, when she knew Mr Jeffrey was at home and preparing for dinner. The two ladies were ushered into the parlour appropriated for visitors. What follows we copy in a somewhat condensed form from the account in _Mystifications_. ‘There was a blazing fire, and wax-lights on the table; he [Jeffrey] had laid down his book, and seemed to be in the act of joining the ladies in the drawing-room before dinner. The Lady Pitlyal was announced, and he stepped forward a few paces to receive her. She was a sedate-looking little woman of an inquisitive law-loving countenance; a mouth in which [by an adroit management of the lips] not a vestige of a tooth was to be seen, and a pair of old-fashioned spectacles on her nose.... She was dressed in an Irish poplin of silver gray, a white Cashmere shawl, a mob-cap with a band of thin muslin that fastened it below the chin, and a small black silk bonnet that shaded her eyes from any glare of light. Her right hand was supported by an antique gold-headed cane, and she leant with the other on the arm of her daughter. ‘Mr Jeffrey bowed, and handed the old lady to a _chaise longue_ on one side of the fire, and sat himself down opposite to her on the other. But in his desire to accommodate the old lady, and in his anxiety to be informed of the purport of the visit, he forgot what was due to the young one, and the heiress of the ancient House of Pitlyal was left standing in the middle of the floor. She helped herself to a chair, however, and sat down beside her mother. She had been educated in somewhat of the severity of the old school, and during the whole of the consultation she neither spoke nor moved a single muscle of her countenance. “_Well!_” said Mr Jeffrey as he looked at the old lady, in expectation that she would open the subject that had procured him the honour of the visit. “Weel,” replied her Ladyship, “I am come to tak’ a word o’ the law frae you. “My husband, the late Ogilvy of Pitlyal, among other property which he left to me, was a house and a yard at the town-end of Kirriemuir, also a kiln and a malt-barn.