My mother was
responsible for this. She would not listen to his awful plan to leave
you in the house. But you might just as well have died. No one was the
wiser and you were given up as lost. A week later, my mother and Mr.
Banks started for America. You and I were with them, but you went as the
daughter of a maid-servant--Ellen Hayes.
"This is the story as my mother has told it to me after all these years.
My stepfather's plan, of course, was to place you where you could never
be found, and then to see to it that our grandfather did not succeed in
changing his will. Moreover, he was bound and determined that he himself
should be named as trustee--when the fortune came over at Lord Brace's
death. That part of it turned out precisely as he had calculated. Let me
go on a few months in advance of my story. Lord Brace died, and the will
was properly probated and the provisions carried out. Brace Hall and the
estates went to your father and the bequest came to me, for you were
considered dead. My stepfather was made trustee. He gave bond in England
and America, I believe. In any event, the fortune was to be mine when I
reached the age of twenty-one, but each year the income, nearly
twenty-five thousand dollars, was to be paid to my stepfather as
trustee, to be safely invested by him. My mother's name was not
mentioned in the document, except once, to identify me as the
beneficiary.
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