Joseph Smith Fletcher

“ Pawle looked his young assistant over with an amused expression.
"You haven't the old practitioner's flair, Viner, my boy!" he said. "When one's got to my age, and seen a number of queer things and happenings, one's quick to see possible cases. Look here!—if Wickham was really Lord Marketstoke, and that girl across the hall is his daughter, she's probably—I say probably, for I don't know if the succession in this case goes with the female line—Countess of Ellingham, in her own right!" ”

“ We know that if he were living, he would now be a man of sixty-one or so; therefore, he'd be at school about forty-five years ago. Now, look here," he went on, rapidly turning the letters over. "Compare these dates—they run through two or three years; they were all of forty-three to forty-six years since. You see how they're signed—you see how they're addressed? There's no doubt about it, Viner—this is a collection of letters written by the seventh Countess of Ellingham to her elder son, Lord Marketstoke, when he was at Eton."
"How came they into Ashton's possession, I wonder!" asked Viner. ”

“ She evidently knows nothing, and she'd better be left in complete ignorance for a while. You see, Viner, as I've pointed out to you several times, there isn't a paper or a document of any description extant which refers to her. Nothing in my hands, nothing in the banker's hands, nothing here! And yet, supposing her father, Wickham, to have been Lord Marketstoke, and to have entrusted his secret to Ashton at the same time that he gave him the guardianship of his daughter, he must have given Ashton papers to prove his and her identity—must! Where are they? ”