“You do not know me yet, Mr Garstang.”
“Indeed? I think I do, as I have known you from a child. You are mentally strong, but you have been, and under these circumstances will be, further sapped by sickness, and it would need superhuman power to win in so cruel a fight. You must not risk it, Kate, my child. You must go.”
“Yes, I feel that I know I must go, but how can I? You, as a lawyer, should know.”
“A long and costly litigation, or an appeal to the Court of Chancery might save you, and a judge make an order traversing your father’s will, but I should shrink from such a course; I know too well the uncertainties of the law.”
“Then your idea for extricating me from my difficult position is of no value,” she said, despairingly.
“You have not heard it yet,” he said, “because I almost shrink from proposing such a thing to your father’s child.”
“Tell me what it is,” she said firmly.
“You desire me to?”
“Of course.”
“It is this—a simple and effective way of checkmating one who has proved himself unworthy. My idea was that you should transfer the guardianship to me.”