"The gentlemen wish to know if your lordship can receive them?" the man asked.
"Yes," Penlyn answered, "I have been expecting a visit from them. Show them in."
They came in together, Mr. Fordyce introducing himself as the solicitor of the late Mr. Cundall, and Mr. Stuart bowing gravely. Then Lord Penlyn motioned to them both to be seated.
"I received your letter last night," he said to the secretary, "and, although I may tell you at once that there were, perhaps, reasons why Mr. Cundall should have left me his property, I was still considerably astonished at hearing he had done so."
"Reasons, my lord!" Mr. Fordyce said, looking up from a bundle of papers which he had taken from his pocket and was beginning to untie. "Reasons! What reasons, may I ask?"
The lawyer, who from his accent was evidently a Scotch-man, was an elderly man, with a hard, unsympathetic face, and it became instantly apparent to Penlyn that, with this man, there must not be the slightest hesitation on his part in anything he said, nor must anything but the plainest truth be spoken. Well! that was what he had made up his mind should be done, and he was glad as he watched Mr. Fordyce's face that he had so decided.
"The reason," he answered, looking straight at both of them, "is that he and I were brothers."
"Brothers!" they both exclaimed together, while Stuart fixed his eyes upon him with an incredulous look, though in it there was something else besides incredulity, a look of suspicion and dislike.
"This is a strange story, Lord Penlyn," the lawyer said after a moment.
"Yes," the other answered. "And you will perhaps think it still more strange when I tell you that I myself did not know of it until a week ago."