propriety of disputing the will on this ground.
If, on the other hand, you tell me that there are
reasons (known to yourself though unknown to
me) for not taking the course I propose, I will
accept that intimation without troubling you,
unless you wish it, to explain yourself further.
In this latter event, I will write to you again—
for I shall then have something more to say,
which may greatly surprise you, on the subject
of the Will.

"Faithfully yours,

"JOHN LOSCOMBE."

VI.

FROM MRS. NOEL VANSTONE TO MR. LOSCOMBE.

"Nov. 16th.

"Dear Sir,—Accept my best thanks for the
kindness and consideration with which you have
treated me—and let the anxieties under which I
am now suffering plead my excuse, if I reply to
your letter without ceremony, in the fewest
possible words.

"I have my own reasons for not hesitating to
answer your question in the negative. It is
impossible for us to go to law, as you propose, on
the subject of the Will.

"Believe me, dear Sir, yours gratefully,

"MAGDALEN VANSTONE."

VII.

FROM MR. LOSCOMBE TO MRS. NOEL VANSTONE.

"Lincoln's Inn, November 17th.

"Dear Madam,—I beg to acknowledge the
receipt of your letter, answering my proposal in
the negative, for reasons of your own. Under
these circumstances—on which I offer no
comment— I beg to perform my promise of again
communicating with you, on the subject of your
late husband's Will.

"Be so kind as to look at your copy of the
document. You will find that the clause which
devises the whole residue of your husband's
estate to Admiral Bartram, ends in these terms:
To be by him applied to such uses as he may think
fit.

"Simple as they may seem to you, these are
very remarkable words. In the first place, no
practical lawyer would have used them, in drawing
your husband's will. In the second place,
they are utterly useless to serve any plain straight-
forward purpose. The legacy is left
unconditionally to the admiral; and in the same breath
he is told that he may do what he likes with it!
The phrase points clearly to one of two conclusions.
It has either dropped from the writer's
pen in pure ignorance—or it has been carefully
set where it appears, to serve the purpose of a
snare. I am firmly persuaded that the latter
explanation is the right one. The words are
expressly intended to mislead some person—
yourself, in all probability—and the cunning
which has put them to that use, is a cunning
which (as constantly happens when uninstructed
persons meddle with law) has overreached itself.
My thirty years' experience reads those words in
a sense exactly opposite to the sense which they
are intended to convey. I say that Admiral
Bartram is not free to apply his legacy to such
purposes as he may think fit—I believe he is
privately controlled by a supplementary document
in the shape of a Secret Trust.

"I can easily explain to you what I mean by a
Secret Trust. It is usually contained in the
form of a letter from a Testator to his Executors,
privately informing them of testamentary
intentions on his part, which he has not thought
proper openly to acknowledge in his will. I
leave you a hundred pounds; and I write a
private letter, enjoining you, on taking the
legacy, not to devote it to your own purposes,
but to give it to some third person, whose name
I have my own reasons for not mentioning in my
will. That is a Secret Trust.

"If I am right in my own persuasion that such
a document as I here describe is at this moment
in Admiral Bartram's possession—a persuasion
based, in the first instance, on the extraordinary
words that I have quoted to you, and, in the
second instance, on purely legal considerations
with which it is needless to encumber my letter
—if I am right in this opinion, the discovery of
the Secret Trust would be, in all probability, a
most important discovery to your interests. I
will not trouble you with technical reasons, or
with references to my experience in these matters,
which only a professional man could understand.
I will merely say that I don't give up your cause
as utterly lost, until the conviction now impressed
on my own mind is proved to be wrong.

"I can add no more, while this important
question still remains involved in doubt; neither
can I suggest any means of solving that doubt.
If the existence of the Trust was proved, and if
the nature of the stipulations contained in it was
made known to me, I could then say
positively what the legal chances were of your
being able to set up a Case on the strength of
it; and I could also tell you, whether I should,
or should not, feel justified in personally
undertaking that Case, under a private arrangement
with yourself.

"As things are, I can make no arrangement,
and offer no advice. I can only put you
confidentially in possession of my private opinion;
leaving you entirely free to draw your own
inferences from it; and regretting that I cannot
write more confidently and more definitely than
I have written here. All that I could conscientiously
say on this very difficult and very delicate
subject, I have said.

"Believe me, dear Madam, faithfully yours,

"JOHN LOSCOMBE."

VIII.

FROM MRS. NOEL VANSTONE TO MR. LOSCOMBE.

"Dear Sir,— I have read your letter more than
once, with the deepest interest and attention—
and the oftener I read it, the more firmly I
believe that there is really such a Letter as you
mention in Admiral Bartram's hands.