I was almost two years
old at the time, and the old man, unexpectedly compassionate, inserted a
provision which, in the event that you were to die before that time,
gave all this money to me on my twenty-first birthday. The interest on
this money, amounting to five thousand pounds annually, was to go to
you regularly, in one case, or to me, in the other. Oswald Banks was an
American, whom my mother had met in London several years prior to her
first marriage. He was the London representative of a big Pennsylvania
manufacturing concern. He was ambitious, unscrupulous and clever beyond
conception. He still is all of these and more, for he is now a coward.
"Well, it was he who concocted the diabolical scheme to one day get
possession of your inheritance. He coerced my poor mother into
acquiescense, and she became his wretched tool instead of an honoured
wife and helpmate. One night, when you were three weeks old, the house
in which we lived was burned to the ground, the inmates narrowly
escaping. So narrow was the escape, in fact, that you were said to have
been left behind in the confusion, and the world was told, the next day,
that the granddaughter of Lord Brace had been destroyed by the flames.
"The truth, however, was not told. My stepfather did not dare to go so
far as to kill you. It was he who caused the fire, but he had you
removed to a small hotel in another part of the city some hours earlier,
secretly, of course, but in charge of a trusted maid.
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