“Nobody can touch the property as long as, I live.”
“Certainly not.”
“Then a fig for the rest! Shall I send you a sole or some stewed eels?”
“It is quite a relief, to me to find how coolly you take my news; though it is true your uncle could not well have made the contingency of your cousin’s inheriting a more remote one.”
“Tell me,” said Lionel, “have you either seen or heard anything of Kester since my uncle’s death?”
“I have heard from him, but not seen him. He wrote to me a few days after your uncle’s funeral, asking me to send him an abstract of the contents of the will. He gave an address in Paris, and I answered his letter by return of post.”
“An address in Paris!” exclaimed Lionel. “That is very strange. I never felt more positive of anything than that my cousin Kester passed me on Westminster Bridge on the very night of my uncle’s funeral.”
“A coincidence, my dear sir, nothing more,” said the lawyer, cheerfully. “Such things happen every day in London. It would almost seem as if every man had his double—a sort of unknown twin-brother—somewhere in the world.”
Lionel pursued the subject no farther, but he was none the less convinced in his own mind that it was Kester, and no one but him, that he had seen. Could he ever forget the look of undying hatred that shone out of his cousin’s eyes?
“You have not yet advised Kester of the contents of the codicil?” he said at last.