“Well?” he said at length.
Sir Robert tilted himself to his feet, and stood rumpling his hair.
“I am at sea!” he cried, in a lost voice. “What does it all mean? I never heard of this estate; nor, I protest, did the executors. How did it come to him, and when?”
“That I may answer you. It was in the year ’79—not many months before his death.”
“And from whom?”
The lawyer shook his head grimly.
“Ah!” said the baronet. “You love a secret, of course. Am I never to know more than this?”
“Sir, you understand the conditions. You are to take or reject.”
“A messuage and the rest of it? And where is the working capital?”
“These many years I have nursed the property against this contingency. It has yielded fairly, and there will be an accumulated sum to your credit.”