Dolores told him, but advised him to meet her at Miss Hackett’s, whom she thought more able to help, and more willing than Miss Vincent, in case he was able to bring Ludmilla away with him.

“Have you heard from my father?”

“Yes—-what I expected.”

“But it will make no difference in the long run.”

“Dearest, do I not trust your brave words?  From Trieste I hear that the endeavour of Benista to recover his wife is proved.  There’s one step of the chain.  Is it dragging us down, or setting us free?”

“Free-—free from the perplexities of property,” cried Dolores.  “Free to carve out a life.”

“Certainly I have wished I was a younger son.  Only if it could have come in some other way!”

Dolores had to go to luncheon at Miss Vincent’s, and then to deliver her lecture.  It was well that she had given it so often as almost to know it by heart, for the volcano of anxiety was surging high within her.

As she went out she saw Gerald waiting for her, and his whole mien spoke of failure.

“Failed!  Yes,” he said.  “The poor child is regularly bound to that Jellicoe, the master of the concern, for twenty-five pounds, the fine that my uncle brought on the mother, as O’Leary said with a grin, and she is still under sixteen.”

“Is there no hope till then?”

“He and O’Leary declare there would be breach of contract if she left them even then.  I don’t know whether they are right, but any amount of mischief might be done before her birthday.  They talk of sending her to Belgium to be trained, and that is fatal.”

“Can’t she be bought off?”

“Of course I tried, but I can’t raise more than seventy pounds at the utmost just now.”

“I could help.  I have twenty-three pounds.  I could give up my term.”

“No use.  They know that I shall not be of age till January, besides the other matter.  I assured them that however that might end, my uncles would honour any order I might give for the sake of rescuing her, but they laughed the idea to scorn.  O’Leary had the impudence to intimate, however, that if I chose to accept the terms expressed, ‘his wife might be amenable.’”

“They are?”

“Five hundred for evidence on the previous marriage in my favour; but I am past believing a word that she says, at least under O’Leary’s dictation.  She might produce a forgery.  So I told him that my uncle was investigating the matter with the consul in Sicily; and the intolerable brutes sneered more than over at the idea of the question being in the hands of the interested party, when they could upset that meddling parson in a moment.”

“Can nothing be done?”

“I thought of asking one of your old ladies whether there is a lawyer or Prevention of Cruelty man who could tell me whether the agreement holds, but I am afraid she is too old.  You saw no mark of ill-usage?”