'The devil--but I don't need to be told that,' exclaimed Cadbury, angrily; 'yet we must eradicate that fancy, and sharply too.' 'But how?' 'Take her over to the Continent. Let us get her on board my yacht, with you as her protector, and all will come right in the end, and I'll leave _you_ ashore somewhere when you least suspect it,' was Cadbury's concluding thought. 'But these bills that Slagg holds----' 'Are not in his possession now.' 'In whose, then?' asked Sir Ranald, with fresh alarm. 'In mine.' 'Yours?' 'Yes--look here.' Cadbury opened his pocket-book and laid before the startled eyes of Sir Ranald eight or nine bills and promissory notes, all of which he knew but too well. 'How comes this pass?' he asked, with a bewildered air, as he passed a hand across his forehead. 'I know Solomon Slagg. I knew him to my cost ere I came to the title. You mentioned that he had acceptances of yours. I got them all up, and trust that in quietude Alison will end this nonsense and become Lady Cadbury.' Sir Ranald shook his head and sank back in his chair. 'If I put these papers in the fire, will you stick to my plan of getting her on board my yacht, and leaving the rest to time and to me?' asked Cadbury, in a voice that intensity rendered husky. 'Yes,' replied Sir Ranald, in a faint voice, while eyeing the fatal documents as if they had serpent-like fascination for him. 'Your hand upon it.' Sir Ranald put his cold, thin hand in the peer's rough and pudgy one, and in another moment the documents were vanishing in the fire. Sir Ranald seemed as one in a dream; he could scarcely believe his senses, and that he was thus freed from those encumbrances, the sudden destruction of which had not been a part of Cadbury's plan on the day he visited Slagg, but was an afterthought to produce a species of dramatic situation, and win, perhaps, through fear or gratitude, what Alison would never accord him from love. He had now, he thought--for he well knew his man--secured the livelong gratitude and trust of her father; and through her filial love of the latter, and the peril which she would still be led to suppose was menacing him, he would attain the means of getting her away and controlling her movements. It is an old aphorism which says with truth that a man is usually more inclined to feel kindly towards one on whom he has conferred favours than to one from whom he has received them; thus, barely had Sir Ranald seen the last of his blue paper shrivel up in the flames, and thus felt a load lifted off his mind, when his natural sense of gratitude jarred with his equally natural constitutional pride, which revolted at the idea of being favoured or protected by any man.