So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other people's business. When that point was reached a third time she gently led the way over it. “Of course,” she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, “one cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the best.” Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined herself to a non-committing “Yes.” After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated. “I cannot but think,” she said, “that Stagholme will be in better hands now. Of course dear Jem was very nice, and all that--a dear, good boy. But do you not think that Arthur is more suited to the position in some ways?” “Perhaps he is,” allowed Mrs. Agar, with ill-concealed pleasure. “He is,” continued Sister Cecilia, with a broader brush, “so refined, so gentlemanly, so ideal a country squire.” And after that she had no difficulty in supplying herself with information. CHAPTER XIII ON THIN ICE Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason. Two days later a gentleman, whose clean-shaven face had a habit of beaming suddenly into a professional smile, was seated at a huge writing-table in his office in Gray's Inn, when a clerk announced to him the arrival of Mrs. Agar, who desired to see him at once. Mr. Rigg beamed instantaneously, and the clerk, who knew his master, waited until the paroxysm had passed. In the meantime Mrs. Agar was fuming in the waiting-room, wherein lay a copy of the _Times_ and nothing else. The window looked out upon the neatly kept but depressing garden, where five antiquated rooks looked in vain for sustenance. Mrs. Agar watched these intelligent birds, but all her soul was in her ears. She had already set Mr. Rigg down in her own mind as a stupid because, forsooth, he had dared to keep her waiting. But the truth is that they are accustomed to ladies in Gray's Inn, especially ladies in deep mourning, with a chastely important air which seems to demand that advice and sympathy be carefully mingled. _Connues_, these ladies whose deep crape and quite exceptional bereavement plead (not always dumbly) for a special equity, home-made and superior to any law, and infer that the ordinary foes are in their case more than any gentleman would think of accepting. The clerk presently passed into an inner room and fetched therefrom a tin box, upon which were painted in dingy white the letters “J. E. M. A.,” and underneath “Stagholme Estate.” This the embryo lawyer carefully wiped with a duster, and set it up on some of its fellows immediately behind Mr. Rigg.