"I'll come and see you settled, Deborah, and then I return to earn an income for Sylvia. I won't let you keep her long."
"She'll stop as long as she have the will," shouted Debby, hugging Sylvia; "as to that Krill cat—"
"She can take possession as soon as she likes. And, Deborah," added Paul, significantly, "for all that has happened, I don't intend to drop the search for your late master's murderer."
"It's the Krill cat as done it," said Debby, "though I ain't got no reason for a-sayin' of such a think."
CHAPTER XIII
THE DETECTIVE'S VIEWS
As Paul expected, the next letter from his father contained a revocation of all that had pleased him in the former one. Beecot senior wrote many pages of abuse—he always did babble like a complaining woman when angered. He declined to sanction the marriage and ordered his son at once—underlined—to give up all thought of making Sylvia Norman his wife. It would have been hard enough, wrote Beecot, to have received her as a daughter-in-law even with money, seeing that she had no position and was the daughter of a murdered tradesman, but seeing also that she was a pauper, and worse, a girl without a cognomen, he forbade Paul to bestow on her the worthy name of Beecot, so nobly worn by himself. There was much more to the same effect, which Paul did not read, and the letter ended grandiloquently in a command that Paul was to repair at once to the Manor and there grovel at the feet of his injured father.