“Do you understand now, Alan?”

“I think so,” he answered.  “You mean that I have been in bad company.”

“Very bad, Alan.  One of them is my own uncle, but the truth remains the truth.  Alan, they are no better than thieves; all this wealth is stolen, and I thank God that you have found it out in time before you became one of them in heart as well as in name.”

“If you refer to the Sahara Syndicate,” he said, “the idea is sound enough; indeed, I am responsible for it.  The thing can be done, great benefits would result, too long to go into.”

“Yes, yes, Alan, but you know that they never mean to do it, they only mean to get the millions from the public.  I have lived with my uncle for ten years, ever since my poor father died, and I know the backstairs of the business.  There have been half a dozen schemes like this, and although they have had their bad times, very bad times, he and Sir Robert have grown richer and richer.  But what has happened to those who have invested in them?  Oh! let us drop the subject, it is unpleasant.  For myself it doesn’t matter, because although it isn’t under my control, I have money of my own.  You know we are a plebeian lot on the male side, my grandfather was a draper in a large way of business, my father was a coal-merchant who made a great fortune.  His brother, my uncle, in whom my father always believed implicitly, took to what is called Finance, and when my father died he left me, his only child, in his guardianship.  Until I am five and twenty I cannot even marry or touch a halfpenny without his consent; in fact if I should marry against his will the most of my money goes to him.”

“I expect that he has got it already,” said Alan.

“No, I think not.  I found out that, although it is not mine, it is not his.  He can’t draw it without my signature, and I steadily refuse to sign anything.  Again and again they have brought me documents, and I have always said that I would consider them at five and twenty, when I came of age under my father’s will.  I went on the sly to a lawyer in Kingswell and paid him a guinea for his advice, and he put me up to that.  ‘Sign nothing,’ he said, and I have signed nothing, so, except by forgery nothing can have gone.  Still for all that it may have gone.  For anything I know I am not worth more than the clothes I stand in, although my father was a very rich man.”

“If so, we are about in the same boat, Barbara,” Alan answered with a laugh, “for my present possessions are Yarleys, which brings in about L100 a year less than the interest on its mortgages and cost of upkeep, and the L1700 that Aylward paid me back on Friday for my shares.  If I had stuck to them I understand that in a week or two I should have been worth L100,000, and now you see, here I am, over thirty years of age without a profession, invalided out of the army and having failed in finance, a mere bit of driftwood without hope and without a trade.”