“The paper you signed,” said Betty, “gave him control over your money?”

A forlorn nod was the answer.

“And since then he has done as he chose, and he has not chosen to care for Stornham.  And once he made you write to father, to ask for more money?”

“I did it once.  I never would do it again.  He has tried to make me.  He always says it is to save Stornham for Ughtred.”

“Nothing can take Stornham from Ughtred.  It may come to him a ruin, but it will come to him.”

“He says there are legal points I cannot understand.  And he says he is spending money on it.”

“Where?”

“He—­doesn’t go into that.  If I were to ask questions, he would make me know that I had better stop.  He says I know nothing about things.  And he is right.  He has never allowed me to know and—­and I am not like you, Betty.”

“When you signed the paper, you did not realise that you were doing something you could never undo and that you would be forced to submit to the consequences?”

“I—­I didn’t realise anything but that it would kill me to live as I had been living—­feeling as if they hated me.  And I was so glad and thankful that he seemed kinder.  It was as if I had been on the rack, and he turned the screws back, and I was ready to do anything—­anything—­if I might be taken off.  Oh, Betty! you know, don’t you, that—­that if he would only have been a little kind—­just a little—­I would have obeyed him always, and given him everything.”

Betty sat and looked at her, with deeply pondering eyes.  She was confronting the fact that it seemed possible that one must build a new soul for her as well as a new body.  In these days of science and growing sanity of thought, one did not stand helpless before the problem of physical rebuilding, and—­and perhaps, if one could pour life into a creature, the soul of it would respond, and wake again, and grow.

“You do not know where he is?” she said aloud.  “You absolutely do not know?”

“I never know exactly,” Lady Anstruthers answered.  “He was here for a few days the week before you came.  He said he was going abroad.  He might appear to-morrow, I might not hear of him for six months.  I can’t help hoping now that it will be the six months.”

“Why particularly now?” inquired Betty.

Lady Anstruthers flushed and looked shy and awkward.

“Because of—­you.  I don’t know what he would say.  I don’t know what he would do.”

“To me?” said Betty.

“It would be sure to be something unreasonable and wicked,” said Lady Anstruthers.  “It would, Betty.”

“I wonder what it would be?” Betty said musingly.

“He has told lies for years to keep you all from me.  If he came now, he would know that he had been found out.  He would say that I had told you things.  He would be furious because you have seen what there is to see.  He would know that you could not help but realise that the money he made me ask for had not been spent on the estate.  He,—­Betty, he would try to force you to go away.”