s in her eyes, leaned back
in an easy-chair and watched her unhappy friend.

"I shall provide Mr. Barnes with proof of everything I say," said Miss
Banks. "There can be no difficulty, Rosalie dear, in confirming all that
I have to tell. If you will permit me to relate the story without
interruption and afterward let me go my way without either pity or
contempt, I shall be, oh, so grateful to you all--especially to you,
dear Rosalie. Believe me I love you with my whole soul.

"I have come to you voluntarily, and my mother, who is in Tinkletown, in
resigning herself to the calls of conscience, is now happier than she
has ever been before. A more powerful influence than her own will or her
own honour, an influence that was evil to the core, inspired her to
countenance this awful wrong. It also checkmated every good impulse she
may have had to undo it in after years. That influence came from Oswald
Banks, a base monster to whom my mother was married when I was a year
old. My mother was the daughter of Lord Abbott Brace, but married my own
father, George Stuart, who was a brilliant but radical newspaper writer
in London, against her father's wish. For this he cast her off and
disinherited her. Grandfather hated him and his views, and he could not
forgive my mother even after my father died, which was two years after
their marriage.

"Lord Richard Brace, my mother's only brother, married the daughter of
the Duchess of B----. You, Rosalie, are Lady Rosalie Brace of Brace
Hall, W--shire, England, the true granddaughter of General Lord Abbott
Brace, one of the noblest and richest men of his day. Please let me go
on; I cannot endure the interruptions. The absolute, unalterable proof
of what I say shall be established through the confession of my own
mother, in whose possession lies every document necessary to give back
to you that which she would have given to me.

"Your mother died a few weeks after you were born, and Sir Richard, who
loved my mother in the face of his father's displeasure, placed you in
her care, while he rushed off, heart-broken, to find solace in Egypt. It
is said that he hated you because you were the cause of her death. On
the day after your birth, old Lord Brace changed his will and bequeathed
a vast amount of unentailed property to you, to be held in trust by your
father until you were twenty-one years of age. I was almost two years
old at the time, and the old man, unexpectedly compassionate, inserted