Meanwhile a very brisk correspondence went on between General Lyon on one part, and Messrs. Heneage and Kent (Drusilla’s lawyers) on the other. The General soon convinced the legal gentlemen that Anna Drusilla Lyon, born Stirling, was the heiress of whom they were in search.
Still, where so much was at stake, they were bound to be very cautious and to receive nothing, not the very smallest fact, upon trust.
So, though General Lyon very seldom troubled Drusilla with this correspondence, he did sometimes feel obliged to come to her for information as to where a certain important witness was to be found; in what cemetery a particular tombstone was to be looked for; or in what parish church such a marriage had been solemnized, or such a baptism administered.
And Drusilla’s prompt and pointed answers very much cleared and expedited the business.
In a more advanced stage of affairs it seemed that she would have to go up to Baltimore; but General Lyon would not hear of her taking any trouble that he could save her; so he wrote to the legal gentlemen, requesting one of the firm to come down to Old Lyon Hall in person, or to send a confidential clerk, and promising to pay all expenses of traveling, loss of time, and so forth.
In answer to this letter, Mr. Kent, the junior partner, arrived at the old hall early in February.
He was armed with a formidable bag of documents and he was closeted all day long with General Lyon in the study.
One can have no secrets from one’s lawyer any more than from one’s physician or confessor; and so General Lyon felt constrained to tell Mr. Kent of the existing estrangement between the heiress and her husband.
“And what I particularly wish,” said the General, confidentially and earnestly, “is that the whole of this large inheritance, coming as it does from her family, may be secured to her separate use, independently of her husband.”
“And that, you are aware, cannot be done, except though a process of law. She must sue for a separate maintenance. Even in such a case I doubt whether the court would adjudge her the whole of this enormous fortune, or even the half of it. Still it is her only resource,” answered Lawyer Kent.