“Impossible!” his father answered with a sigh.  “It is so tied up in the will that she cannot sign it away herself until she comes of age.  There is no way of touching it except by her marriage—­or by her death.”

“Then we must have it by the only means open to us.”

“And that is?”

“I must marry her.”

“You will?”

“I shall.  Here is my hand on it.”

“Then we are saved,” cried the old man, throwing up his tremulous hands.  “Girdlestone & Son will weather the storm yet.”

“But Girdlestone becomes a sleeping partner,” said Ezra.  “It’s for my own sake I do it and not for yours,” with which frank remark he drew his hat down over his brows and set off for Eccleston Square.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A DANGEROUS PROMISE.

During Ezra Girdlestone’s absence in Africa our heroine’s life had been even less eventful than of old.  There was a consistency about the merchant’s establishment which was characteristic of the man.  The house itself was austere and gloomy, and every separate room, in spite of profuse expenditure and gorgeous furniture, had the same air of discomfort.  The servants too, were, with one single exception, from the hard-visaged housekeeper to the Calvinistic footman, a depressing and melancholy race.  The only departure from this general rule was Kate’s own maid, Rebecca Taylforth, a loudly-dressed, dark-eyed, coarse-voiced young woman, who raised up her voice and wept when Ezra departed for Africa.  This damsel’s presence was most disagreeable to Kate, and, indeed, to John Girdlestone also, who only retained her on account of his son’s strong views upon the subject, and out of fear of an explosion which might wreck all his plans.

The old merchant was Kate’s only companion during this period, and their conversation was usually limited to a conventional inquiry at breakfast time as to each other’s health.  On his return from the City in the evening Girdlestone was always in a moody humour, and would eat his dinner hastily and in silence.  After dinner he was in the habit of reading methodically the various financial articles in the day’s papers, which would occupy him until bedtime.  Occasionally his companion would read these aloud to him, and such was the monotony of her uneventful life that she found herself becoming insensibly interested in the fluctuations of Grand Trunk scrip or Ohio and Delaware shares.  The papers once exhausted, a bell was rung to summon the domestics, and when all were assembled the merchant, in a hard metallic voice, read through the lesson for the day and the evening prayers.  On grand occasions he supplemented this by a short address, in the course of which he would pelt his frightened audience with hard jagged texts until he had reduced them to a fitting state of spiritual misery.  No wonder that, under the influence of such an existence, the roses began to fade from his ward’s cheeks, and her youthful heart to grow sad and heavy.