they were still at table when Mr. Camminy was announced and ushered in.

The man of law murmured an excuse or two; he knew his client's eye, and
how to thaw it.

'No, Miss Adister, I have not breakfasted,' he said, taking the chair
placed for him. 'I was all day yesterday at Windlemont, engaged in
assisting to settle the succession. Where estates are not entailed!'

'The expectations of the family are undisciplined and certain not to be
satisfied,' Mr. Adister carried on the broken sentence. 'That house will
fall! However, you have lost no time this morning.--Mr. Patrick
O'Donnell.'

Mr. Camminy bowed busily somewhere in the direction between Patrick and
the sideboard.

'Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians,' Mr. Adister
resumed, talking to blunt his impatience for a private discussion with
his own.

'Surgery's a little in their practice too, we think in Ireland,' said
Patrick.

Mr. Camminy assented: 'No doubt.' He was hungry, and enjoyed the look of
the table, but the look of his client chilled the prospect, considered in
its genial appearance as a feast of stages; having luminous extension;
so, to ease his client's mind, he ventured to say: 'I thought it might be
urgent.'