"I have right on my side. He is my guardian, and he dare not act otherwise than justly by me. I am no longer the weak child now." And once more she took paper, and wrote this time to James Wilton himself, telling him that Garstang had lured her away by the promise of protection, but had shown himself in the vilest colours at last. "He must--he shall protect me," she said, exultantly, and she hastily directed the letter. But as she sat there with the letter in her hand, she shrank and trembled. For in vivid colours her imagination painted before her the trouble and persecution to which she would expose herself. She knew well enough what were James Wilton's aims, and that situated as he was, he would stand at nothing to gain them. It was in vain she told herself that anything would be preferable to staying there at John Garstang's mercy, the horror of rushing headlong back to her guardian, and the thoughts of his triumphant looks as he held her tightly once again, proved too much for her, and this letter was slowly torn up and the pieces hidden. As she sat there, with every nerve on the rack, a strange feeling of faintness came over her, and she started up in horror at the idea of losing her senses, and being at this man's mercy. And as she walked hurriedly to and fro, trembling as she felt the faintness increasing, some relief came, for she grasped the fact that her faintness was due to want of food, and it was past mid-day. There was the bread close at hand, though, and turning to it she began to crumble up the pieces and to eat, though it was only with the greatest difficulty that she accomplished her task. But it had the required effect--the sensation of sinking passed off. And now she set herself the task of trying to think of some one among the very few friends she had known before her father's death to whom she could send for help; but there did not occur to her mind one to whom she could apply in such a strait. There were the people at the bank, and the doctor who had attended her father in his last illness, but they were comparatively such strangers that she shrank from writing to them; and at last, unnerved, and with her mind seeming to refuse to act, she sat there feeling that there was not a soul in the world whom she could trust but the Leighs. She could send to Jenny, who would, she knew, be up in arms at once; but there was her brother. She could not, she dared not, ask him; and it would be, she felt, asking him. It would be so interpreted if she wrote. And then came the question which sent a shiver through her frame--what must he think of her, and would he come to her help as he would have done before she committed so rash an act? Kate's weary ponderings were interrupted by a tap at the door, which produced a fit of trembling, and she glided to it to slip the bolt, which had hardly passed into its socket before the housekeeper's voice was heard.