Then, until you had reached your majority, I had a constant watch kept upon you--not to interfere with you in any way, but so that I might be able to find you should need arise.

When in due course I heard of your first act on coming of age I was satisfied.

I had to know of the carrying out of your original intention towards Janet Mac Kelpie, for the securities had to be transferred.
From that time on I watched--of course through other eyes--your chief doings.

It would have been a pleasure to me to have been able to help in carrying out any hope or ambition of yours, but I realized that in the years intervening between your coming of age and the present moment you were fulfilling your ideas and ambitions in your own way, and, as I shall try to explain to you presently, my ambitions also.

You were of so adventurous a nature that even my own widely-spread machinery of acquiring information--what I may call my private "intelligence department"-- was inadequate.