The Captain shewed a face of astonishment.

"Gracious! what had Winnington to do with Sir Robert Blanchflower!"

"An old friend, apparently. But it is a curious will."

The solicitor's abstracted look shewed a busy mind. The Captain had
never felt a livelier desire for information.

"Isn't there something strange about the girl?"--he said, lowering his
voice, although there was no one else in the railway carriage. "I never
saw a more beautiful creature! But my mother came home from London the
other day with some very queer stories, from a woman who had met them
abroad. She said Miss Blanchflower was awfully clever, but as wild as a
hawk--mad about women's rights and that kind of thing. In the hotel
where she met them, people fought very shy of her."

"Oh, she's a militant suffragist," said the solicitor quietly--"though
she's not had time yet since her father's death to do any mischief.
That--in confidence--is the meaning of the will."

The adjutant whistled.

"Goodness!--Winnington will have his work cut out for him. But he
needn't accept."

"He has accepted. I heard this morning from the London solicitor."

"Your firm does the estate business down here?"