Meanwhile, matters had gone hardly with the wife and child of Leonard Reynolds. It had been impossible for them to farm the ranch, and they had no private means. By the advice of her friends Mrs. Reynolds had sold up her few possessions and had come to England with her daughter, to find out at first hand from the lawyers whether any provision had been made for her out of the estate. The solicitors were polite and sympathetic: they acknowledged the keen injustice of the matter, but assured her that there was no redress, and, according to British law, Mr. Hockheimer had full rights of possession in the Lyngates property, while she and her child could not claim so much as a solitary farthing. They represented the case, however, to Mr. Hockheimer, and he at once offered Mrs. Reynolds the use of a cottage on his land, together with a small annual income, and promised to pay for Pamela's education at a day school in Harlingden. As she had no other means of livelihood, Mrs. Reynolds had accepted this help, and had settled down at Lyngates shortly before this story begins. She was a fragile little woman, gentle and clinging in disposition, and so battered by misfortune that she was glad to rest anywhere where she could find a home. She received Mr. Hockheimer's dole quite gratefully. With the loss of her husband life had for her practically stopped. Through her daughter it held a second-hand kind of interest. She welcomed the idea of Pamela attending a good school, and her crushed soul even began to indulge in timid little day-dreams concerning her child's future. These hopes, pathetic and tender, were like wild sweet violets springing up over the desolation of a battle-field. Pamela viewed the situation from an utterly different standpoint. She had inherited her grandfather's strength of character along with the Reynolds features, and also a considerable share of his pride. Her early life in Canada had made her more independent than most English girls of her age. She considered that by all rights of justice an equal half of the Lyngates estate should have been hers, and that her uncle, Mr. Hockheimer, had managed to steal her inheritance. She hated to accept from him as charity what she felt ought to have been her own, and she bitterly resented the patronizing attitude which he adopted towards herself and her mother. She, too, had her day-dreams, and most of them centred round a time when she would be old enough to shake off this thraldom of dependence and strike out a line of her own in the world. CHAPTER V Ructions