have some power. There are other agents in the world, and other lawyers.
They can help me, if I wish help. We are not living in the Middle Ages
when some one could seize one's property by the strong hand and keep it.
There is law in the country, and Wiggins is subject to it."

"Oh, my child," said Miss Plympton, anxiously, "I am terrified at the
very thought of your being in that man's power. You can not tell what
things are possible; and though there is law, as you say, yet it does
not always happen that one can get justice."

"That I know, or ought to know," said Edith, in a mournful voice; "I
have learned that this past night only too well."

"It seems to me," said Miss Plympton, with the same anxiety in her
voice, "that to return to Dalton Hall will be to put yourself in some
way into his power. If he is really the unscrupulous, crafty, and
scheming man that I have suspected him to be, he will not find it
difficult to weave some plot around you which may endanger your whole
life. There is no safety in being bear that man. Be mistress of Dalton
Hall, but do not go there till you have driven him away. It seems by his
last letters as though he is living there now, and if you go there you
will find yourself in some sense under his control."

"Well," said Edith, "I do not doubt his willingness to injure me if he
can, or to weave a plot which shall ruin me; but, after all, such a
thing takes time. He can not ruin me in one day, or in one week, and so
I think I can return to Dalton Hall in safety, and be secure for a few
days at least."

Miss Plympton made some further objections, but the vague fears to which