46
THE SURAKARTA
out power to control you. The present matter is different."
"Will you tell me how it is different?" She had turned back to him uneasily.
"There is definitely provided, Miss Regan, in a clause of some three or four lines in the papers that gave me charge of your father's estate, the power for me to prevent you from any irreparable act. None of your many adventures of foolishness and vanity from which I have previously tried to check you have been such that, in court, I could expect to hold them as coming under the provisions of that clause. So far, then, my hands were tied; but this adventure you threaten would be quite irreparable. There is no court in the country that would not sustain my right to hold you from it under my powers."
