"Well, I am glad to hear you say that. At the same time, I can't forget what you were willing to do. At any rate, I am preventing you from something in the nature of a crime. You can't interfere with my property, but you can refuse to carry out what Copley desires and defy him to do his worst. You are safe from him, and in future your daughter will have no occasion to be ashamed of you." CHAPTER XXXVIII LOOSENING THE GRIP Fielden's last thrust went home. Sir George fairly winced and the red of shame flushed his face. Never in the course of his life had anybody ever spoken to him like this before. And never did he feel less able to resist the reproach. "You are going too far," was all he could say. "Indeed, I have no wish to," Fielden exclaimed. "I only want to save you from this crowning folly, and you need not be afraid of Copley. He is powerless to do you any mischief. Of course, you will still owe the money to somebody, but ere the law can make up its mind who is your creditor, if we have any luck at Epsom, you will be independent of all your creditors. Nobody need know of this. You may rest assured that not a word of it will ever pass my lips, and not even May shall be told." "I am afraid she knows already," Sir George rejoined. "It is useless, my dear boy, for me to combat your statements farther. I thought I was an honest English gentleman, and now I find that at a turn of the screw I am only a pitiful scoundrel. I fear that May has found out all about it. I was anxious she should marry Copley, for salvation seemed to lie that way, and I was under great obligations to the man. I was so annoyed with May that I said more than I should have done; indeed, I lost my temper and, in the heat of the moment, told her that if she did not obey me in this matter she was no longer a daughter of mine. Of course, I did not mean it." Fielden walked to the window and back before he ventured on a reply. Hot words hovered on his lips and anger filled his heart, but he tried to speak calmly. "That, to say the least of it, was indiscreet," he said. "If I know May, and I think I do, she is the last girl in the world to put up with treatment like that." "She didn't put up with it," Sir George confessed miserably. "She has gone, taking with her nothing but her mother's jewels which she intends to turn into money. In her letter to me she refuses to say where she is. She says she is going to get her own living and will never come back to Haredale. She must know what took place between Copley and me last night, for she alludes to something she overheard in the library. I wonder if you can help me?"