"I had," Sir George whispered. "Last night you left me in the depths of despair. I could not sleep, I could think of nothing but what you told me about Ralph Darnley. I wondered if perhaps he was secretly my enemy. Then it occurred to me that he was looking for some papers in that old chest. I could not rest till I was satisfied; I also searched the old chest. And what did I find? I found the late Sir Ralph Dashwood's will and I found his unhappy son's deed cutting off the entail. If no son of the second Ralph turns up within the next six months, everything is mine. You can understand how the full force of that discovery overwhelmed me. Here was a way out of all my difficulties. That is why I was in a position to face Mayfield fearlessly this morning. Within a week at the outside I could raise the money to be clear of him. I had quite forgotten the smaller item. I should have remembered it, I ought to have been smooth and smiling before Mayfield's face until I was ready to be clear of him for ever. And now he can strike me a deadly blow before I am ready to meet it. Of course the inconvenience----" "Inconvenience! Can you speak of so disgraceful a thing by such a name? Dearly as I love the old house, I would rather see it and all its treasures burnt to the ground. I could put the match to it myself." Mary's voice rang out with passionate anger. Her blue eyes blazed. There was no trace of exaggeration in what she said, she would have been ready to carry out her threat. "It won't last long," Sir George muttered. "I'll go to London tomorrow and take those papers with me. As soon as they have been verified, the bank will advance me all I need. But business of this sort takes time. People are very chary of parting with their money unless it is well secured. Probably by the end of the week----" "The end of the week! And the blow may fall tonight! We must have that money now." "Impossible, my dear child. I'm afraid you do not appreciate the situation. When I came into the property I was heavily in debt. I had to pay off those debts; also I had to keep up the house in a way that befitted the traditions of the family. The consequence is that I am constantly overdrawn at my bank as far as the people there allow it. They don't like it, because they feel that if anything happened to me, or some son of young Ralph Dashwood came along, I should find myself not in--er--a position to meet all my liabilities. Therefore, to go to them to raise this money would be worse than useless. I am afraid that we shall have to put up with the inconvenience till the end of the week, when those papers I found will have been properly verified."