“My mother’s description of that stormy night in February, more than twenty-one years ago, is the most pitiful thing I have ever listened to.  Together they made their way to Tinkletown, hiring a vehicle in Boggs City for the purpose.  Mr. Banks left the basket on your porch while mother stood far down the street and waited for him, half frozen and heartsick.  Then they hurried out of town and were soon safely on their way to New York.  It was while my stepfather was in London, later on, that mother came up to see Rosalie and make that memorable first payment to Mr. Crow.  How it went on for years, you all know.  It was my stepfather’s cleverness that made it so impossible to learn the source from which the mysterious money came.

“We travelled constantly, always finding new places of interest in which my mother’s conscience could be eased by contact with beauty and excitement.  Gradually she became hardened to the conditions, for, after all, was it not her own child who was to be enriched by the theft and the deception?  Mr. Banks constantly forced that fact in upon her mother-love and her vanity.  Through it all, however, you were never neglected nor forgotten.  My mother had your welfare always in mind.  It was she who saw that you and I were placed at the same school in New York, and it was she who saw that your training in a way was as good as it could possibly be without exciting risk.

“Of course, I knew nothing of all this.  I was rolling in wealth and luxury, but not in happiness.  Instinctively I loathed my stepfather.  He was hard, cruel, unreasonable.  It was because of him that I left school and afterward sought to earn my own living.  You know, Rosalie, how Tom Reddon came into my life.  He was the son of William Reddon, my stepfather’s business partner, who had charge of the Western branch of the concern in Chicago.  We lived in Chicago for several years, establishing the business.  Mr. Banks was until recently president of the Banks & Reddon Iron Works.  Last year, you doubtless know, the plant was sold to the great combine and the old company passed out of existence.  This act was the result of a demand from England that the trust under which he served be closed and struck from the records.  It was his plan to settle the matter, turn the inheritance over to me according to law, and then impose upon my inexperience for all time to come.  The money, while mine literally, was to be his in point of possession.

“But he had reckoned without the son of his partner.  Tom Reddon in some way learned the secret, and he was compelled to admit the young man into all of his plans.  This came about some three years ago, while I was in school.  I had known Tom Reddon in Chicago.  He won my love.  I cannot deny it, although I despise him to-day more deeply than I ever expect to hate again.  He was even more despicable than my stepfather.  Without the faintest touch of pity, he set about to obliterate every chance