‘_De mortuis_,’ said the lawyer. ‘I admit that if your idea—mind, I fully believe in your own good faith, but you may be mistaken for all that—if your idea is correct, I repeat this girl has been badly treated. But my client is in his grave; let us make what excuses we can for conduct that at first sight appears unmanly.’ ‘I can make no excuse for a man who repudiated his child; who suffered his wife to die broken-hearted, lest by a manly avowal of his marriage he should hazard the loss of fortune.’ ‘Recollect that Henry Glenlyne was brought up and educated in the expectation of his uncle’s fortune, that he was deeply in debt for some years before his uncle died, and that the forfeiture of that fortune would have been absolute ruin.’ ‘It was a large fortune, I suppose?’ ‘It was a fortune that would have been counted large when I was a youngster, but which now might be called mediocre. It was under rather than over a hundred thousand pounds, and chiefly invested in land. Reginald Glenlyne had been in the Indian Civil Service when the pagoda-tree was better worth shaking than it is nowadays, and in a lengthened career had contrived to do pretty well for himself. He belonged to an old family, and a rich one, and had started in life with a competence.’ ‘Henry Glenlyne did inherit this fortune, I conclude?’ ‘Yes, though the Spalding Glenlynes ran him hard for it.’ ‘How long did he survive his uncle?’ ‘Nearly ten years. He married a year after the old man’s death—married a fashionable woman, handsome, extravagant, and it was whispered a bit of a tartar. She brought him two sons and a daughter, who all died—a taint of consumption in the blood, people said; and the lady herself died of rapid consumption two years before her husband. The loss of wife and children broke him up altogether; and Joseph Spalding Glenlyne, who had watched the estate like a harpy ever since he left Cambridge, had the satisfaction of coming into possession of it after all.’ ‘Did Henry Glenlyne make a will?’ ‘No; he died suddenly, though his constitution had been broken for some time before the end. Joseph Glenlyne inherited under the uncle’s will.’ ‘And that left the estate—’ ‘To Henry Glenlyne, and his children after him. Failing such issue, to Joseph Spalding Glenlyne, and his children after him. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne has plenty of children—raw-boned boys, who prowl about Westminster between school-hours with their luncheons in blue bags. A saving man, Mr. Glenlyne. I have seen his boys in the abbey itself munching surreptitious sandwiches.’ ‘Then this estate now held by Mr. Spalding Glenlyne actually belongs of right to Lucille.’ ‘If you can prove her to be the legitimate daughter of Henry Glenlyne, she is most decidedly entitled to claim it.’ ‘If I cannot prove that, I must be unworthy of success in any walk of life,’ said Lucius.