you don't
like it. Well, you can unravel your own tangle. Don't come to me."

The sight of her distress seemed to whet his appetite for cruelty. He
rubbed salt into the open wounds with zest.

"Get your sky-pilot to help you out of it. I won't. Not a penny do I pay.
Seven thousand dollars!"

"Father, a hundred thousand could not make any difference to you," she
cried. "You must let me have the money. Take it out of my mother's
allowance."

"What allowance? Who told you anything about any allowance?"

"Father, you're an old man, and your memory is failing you. You know, I'm
entitled to an allowance from my mother's money. You don't mean to say
you're going to stop that?"

"Who's stopping your allowance? Trimmer! Trimmer!" he cried.

Something in his manner--a look--a guilty terror in his eyes, made itself
apparent to the woman. The reference to her mother frightened him. She
saw behind the veil--but indistinctly.

It had always been a sore point that her father conceded only an
allowance of a few thousands a year, whereas her mother had brought him
an income of many thousands. Mrs. Herresford had always given her
daughter to understand that wealth would revert to her, but, as the girl
was too young to understand money matters at the time of her mother's
death, she had been entirely at the mercy of her father.

In her present despair, she was ready to seize any floating straw. The
idea came to her that she might have some unexpected reversionary
interest in her mother's money, on which she could raise something.

Trimmer put an end to the interview by answering his master's call. The
miser was gesticulating and mumbling, and frantically motioning his
daughter to leave the room.

"She wants to rob me!--she wants to rob me!" This was all that she
understood of his raving.

"It is useless to talk to him now, Mrs. Swinton," said Trimmer, with a
suggestive glance toward the door.

She departed without another word, full of a new idea. Her position was
such that only a lawyer could help her; and she was resolved to have
legal advice. It was a forlorn hope, but one not to be despised; and
there was not a moment to lose. As if by an inspiration, she remembered
the name of a lawyer who used to be her mother's adviser--a Mr. Jevons,
who used to come to Asherton Hall before her mother died, and afterward
quarreled with Herresford. This was the man to advise her. He would be
sure to know the truth about the private f