Mr.  D'Oyly  had  told  Lady  Stelfox  that  Claud
Winthorpe  had  been  candid  and  unreserved  with
him,  and  she  knew  what  that  meant.  In  point
of   law   the  young   man   was  illegitimate,   but  the  fact


MR.    D'OYLI   sends    A   MESSAGE  TO  JINNYANN.         273

was  known  only  to  a  few  persons,  and  these,  his  mother,
Stewart  Owens  and  Mr.  D'Oyly,  were  of  the  one  mind
with  him  in  thinking  that  a  law  which  placed  a  stigma
on  him  and  his  mother  was  to  be  resisted  and  ignored.
A  nice  point  in  the  law  which  Claud  Winthorpe  did  recog-
nise, and  go  by,  the  law  of  his  own  conscience,  arose,
however,  in  connection  with  this  decision.  On  the  one
hand  as  far  as  he  could  he  would  not  allow  a  law  framed
solely  with  an  eye  to  the  devolution  of  property  to
wantonly  injure  him,  place  him,  under  the  prevailing
form  of  opinion,  at  a  social  disadvantage.  On  the  other
hand,  as  technically  an  illegitimate  person,  he  could  not
inherit  property  except  by  will  from  a  person  with  due
testamentary  j)ower;  if  he  did  inherit  under  the  cloak  of
secrecy  covering  his  birth  he  would  inflict  a  wrong  on  the
person  legally  entitled  to  the  inheritance.
This  was  his  ]3osition,  as  he  explained  to  Mr.  D'Oyly,
with  respect  to  the  Fourteen  Towns  estate  in  Ireland.
There  was  no  person  with  testamentary  power  to  will
the  estate  to  him ;  it  had  never  been  willed  to  him  ;  he
had  inherited  it  subject  to  the  terms  of  an  illusory  trust.
