Mr.
Camperdown was not a man to take up such a question and to let it drop.

Legal steps! What did legal steps mean, and what could they do to her?
Would Mr.Camperdown be able to put her in prison,--or to take away from her the estate of Portray?
She could swear that her husband had given them to her, and could invent any form of words she pleased as accompanying the gift.

No one else had been near them then.

But she was, and felt herself to be absolutely, alarmingly ignorant, not only of the laws, but of custom in such matters.
Messrs.

Mowbray and Mopus and Mr.Benjamin were the allies to whom she looked for guidance; but she was wise enough to know that Mowbray and Mopus, and Harter and Benjamin were not trustworthy, whereas Camperdown and Son and the Messrs.