He replied, with truth and gallantry, that he would have scarcely taken her for that. "You flatter me," she said, with a sad smile; "I feel as if I were fifty. This dreadful blow has made an old woman of me!" To conclude the story she related to Mr. Holdfast, the day before she was twenty-one she received a packet from her guardian in London, and a letter saying that he was going abroad, to America she believed, perhaps never to return, and that he completed the trust imposed upon him by her father by sending her her little fortune. It was contained in the packet, and consisted of the United States bonds which had that day been declared to be forgeries. The departure of her guardian did not cause her to waver in her determination to leave her aunt's home the moment she was entitled to do so. Her life had been completely wretched and unhappy, and her only desire was to place a long distance between herself and her cruel relative, so that the woman could not harass her. The day arrived, and with a light heart, with her fortune in her pocket, Lydia Wilson, without even wishing her aunt good-bye or giving the slightest clue as to the direction of her flight, left her home, and took a railway ticket to London. "Not all the way to London first," said the young lady; "I broke the journey half-way, so that if my aunt followed me, she would have the greater difficulty in discovering me." The young lady arrived in London, and took a modest lodging in what she believed to be a respectable part of the City. When she met Mr. Holdfast, she had been in London five weeks, and the little money she had saved was gone, with the exception of three shillings and sixpence. Then she fell back upon the bonds, and considered herself as rich as a princess. "But even this money," said Mr. Holdfast to her, "would not last for ever." "O, yes, it would," insisted the young lady; "I would have made it last for ever!" What was to be done with so impracticable and charming a creature, with a young lady, utterly alone and without resources, and whose tastes, as she herself admits, were always of an expensive kind? Mr. Holdfast saw the danger which beset her, and determined to shield her from harm. To have warned her of the pitfalls and traps with which such a city as London is dotted would have been next to useless. To such an innocent mind as hers, the warning itself would have seemed like a trap to snare the woman it was intended to save. "Have you any objection," said Mr. Holdfast, when the young lady's story was finished, "to my endeavouring to find the guardian who has wronged you? America is now a near land, and I could enlist the services of men who would not fail to track the scoundrel."