Then the blow fell.

He wrote to say that if the money were not sent him by Thursday he should at once commence an action against her.
"The damages that I shall win," he wrote, "will be so large that I shall not want to ask you for more." She was terrified almost out of her senses.

To many women it would have occurred to sell or pledge their jewels, to change diamonds for paste.
She thought of none of these things.

Lord Ridsdale had gone to Paris, she could not ask him, and Lady Atherton was at her wits' end.
She learned, however, that she was too fearful, that he was trading on her alarm, that he could not bring an action against her, because at the time that promise had been given she was a ward and not of age.

She wrote and told him that his threat was in vain.
It was the answer to that question that drove her from home a fugitive, that exiled her from all she loved, that drove her mad with terror.
He wrote to her and admitted that her argument was perfectly just, that perhaps in strict legal bounds he could not maintain such an action; but the shame and exposure for her, he told her, would be none the less.
"If you persist in your refusal," he wrote, "I shall go at once to Lord Atherton.