"Quite impossible. The conduct to you of your aunt and uncle makes them--no matter what promises they may give you--quite unworthy of your trust. Well?" "I have pretty well decided that I shall go away to-morrow with Eliza, our old nurse and maid." "A most worthy woman, my dear. You could not do better; but--" "But what?" said Kate, nervously. "I do not wish to alarm you, but do you fully realise your position here?" "Yes, and that is why I have decided to go." "Exactly; but you do not fully grasp my meaning. What about your uncle?" "You mean that he will object?" "Exactly." "But if I am firm, and insist, he will not dare to detain me," said the girl warmly. "You think so? Well, think again, my child. He is your guardian and trustee; he will absolutely refuse, and will take any steps which he considers right to prevent your leaving. I am afraid that by the power your poor father left in his hands he will consider himself justified in keeping you quite as a prisoner until you obey his wishes." "Mr Garstang, surely he dare not proceed to such extremities!" "I am afraid that he has the power, and I grieve to say he is in such a position that he is likely to be reckless in his desire to gain his ends." Kate drew a deep breath, and gazed appealingly in the speaker's face. "As a solicitor and the husband of your aunt's late sister, James Wilton naturally came to me for help in his money affairs, and I did the best I could for him. I found that he had been gambling foolishly on the Stock Exchange, instead of keeping to his farms, and was so involved that immediate payments had to be made to save him from absolute ruin." "But my father surely did not know of this?" "Not a word. He kept his own counsel, and of course until the will was read I had no idea of what arrangements your father had made; in fact, I was somewhat taken aback, for I thought it possible that he would have made me one of your trustees. But that by the way. I helped your uncle all I could as a monetary agent, and found clients who were willing to advance him money on his estate, which is now deeply mortgaged. These moneys are now wanted, for the interest has not been fully paid for years. In short, James Wilton is in a desperate condition, and my visits here have been to try and extricate him from his monetary tangle in which he finds himself. Now do you begin to grasp what his designs are?" "Yes, I see," said Kate, sadly; "it is to get some of the money which should be mine, to pay his debts." "Exactly, and the simplest way to do so is to marry you to Claud." "No: there is a simpler way, Mr Garstang. If my uncle had come to me and told me his position I should have felt that I could not have done a more kindly deed than to help my father's brother by paying his debts."