After a moment' pause she continued: "He told you all about the race which Flamingo lost, and about that letter." She pointed to the letter which Kitty still carried in her hand. "Well, that letter was written under the sting of bitter disappointment. I was vain. I was young. I did not understand as I do now. If you were not such good friends--of his--I could not tell you this. It seemed to me that by breaking his pledge he showed he did not care for me; that he thought he could break a sacred pledge to me, and it didn't matter. I thought it was treating me lightly--to do it so soon after the pledge was given. I was indignant.

I felt we weren't as we might be, and I felt, too, that I must be at fault; but I was so proud that I didn't want to admit it, I suppose, when he did give me a grievance. It was all so mixed. I was shocked at his breaking his pledge, I was so vexed that our marriage hadn't been the success it might have been, and I think I was a little mad."

"That is not the monopoly of only one of your s.e.x," interposed the Young Doctor dryly. "If I were you I wouldn't apologise for it. You speak to a sister in like distress."

Kitty's eyes flamed up, but she turned her head, as though some licensed libertine of speech had had his say, and looked with friendly eyes at Mona. "Yes, yes--please go on," she urged.

"When I wrote that letter I had forgotten what I had done the day before the race. I had gone into my husband's room to find some things I needed from the drawer of his dressing-table; and far at the back of a drawer I found a crumpled-up roll of ten-pound notes. It was fifty pounds altogether. I took the notes--"

She paused a moment, and the room became very still. Both her listeners were sure that they were nearing a thing of deep importance.

In a lower voice Mona continued: "I don't know what possessed me, but perhaps it was that the things he did of which I disapproved most had got a hold on me in spite of myself. I said to myself: 'I am going to the Derby. I will take the fifty pounds, and I'll put it on a horse for Shiel.' He had talked so much to my brother about Flamingo, and I had seen him go wrong so often, that I had a feeling if I put it on a horse that Shiel particularly banned, it would probably win. He had been wrong nearly every time for two years. It was his money, and if it won, it would make him happy; and if it didn't win, well, he didn't know the money existed--I was sure of that; and, anyhow, I could replace it. I put it on a horse he condemned utterly, but of which one or two people spoke well. You know what happened to Flamingo. While at Epsom I heard from friends that Shiel was present at the race, though he had said he would not go. Later I learned that he had lost heavily. Then I saw him in the distance paying out money and giving bills to the bookmakers. It made me very angry. I don't think I was quite sane. Most women are like that at times."

"As I said," remarked the Young Doctor, his face mirthfully alive. Here was a situation indeed.

"So I wrote him that letter," Mona went on. "I had forgotten all about the money I put on the outsider which won the race. As you know, I was called away to my sick sister that evening, and the money I won with Shiel's fifty pounds was not paid to me till after Shiel had gone."

"How much was it?" asked Kitty breathlessly.

"Four thousand pounds."

Kitty exclaimed so loudly that she smothered her mouth with a hand.

"Why, he only needs for the syndicate two thousand pounds--ten thousand dollars," she said excitedly. "But what's the good of it, if he can't lay his hand on it by midnight to-night!"

"He can do so," was Mona's quick reply. "I was going to tell him that, but the lawyer came, and--"

Kitty sprang up and down in excitement. "I had a plan. It might have worked without this. It was the only way then. But this makes it sure--yes, most beautifully sure. It shows that the thing to do is to follow your convictions. You say you actually have the money, Mrs.

Crozier?"

Mona took from her pocket an envelope, and out of it she drew four Bank of England notes. "Here it is--here are four one-thousand-pound notes.

I had it paid to me that way five years ago, and here--here it is," she added, with almost a touch of hysteria in her voice, for the excitement of it all acted on her like an electric storm.

"Well, we'll get to work at once," declared Kitty, looking at the notes admiringly, then taking them from Mona and smoothing them out with tender firmness. "It's just the luck of the wide world, as my father used to say. It actually is. Now you see," she continued, "it's like this. That letter you wrote him"--she addressed herself to Mona--"it has to be changed. You have got to rewrite it, and you must put into it these four bank-notes. Then when you see him again you must have that letter opened at exactly the right moment, and--oh, I wonder if you will do it exactly right!" she added dubiously to Mona. "You don't play your game very well, and it's just possible that, even now, with all the cards in your hands, you will throw them away as you did in the past. I wish that--"

Seeing Mona's agitation changing to choler, the Young Doctor intervened.

He did not know Kitty was purposely stinging Crozier's unhappy little consort, so that she should be put upon her mettle to do the thing without bungling.

"You can trust Mrs. Crozier to act carefully; but what exactly do you mean? I judge that Mrs. Crozier does not see more distinctly than I do," he remarked inquiringly to Kitty, and with admonishment in tone and emphasis.

"No, I do not understand quite--will you explain?" interposed Mona with inner resentment at being managed, but feeling that she could not do without Kitty even if she would.

"As I said," continued Kitty, "I will open that letter, and you will put in another letter and these bank-notes; and when he repeats what he said about the way you felt and wrote when he broke his pledge, you can blaze up and tell him to open the letter. Then he will be so sorry that he'll get down on his knees, and you will be happy ever after."

"But it will be a fraud, and dishonest and dishonourable," protested Mona.

Kitty almost sniffed, but she was too agitated to be scornful. "Just leave that to me, please. It won't make me a bit more dishonourable to open the letter again--I've opened it once, and I don't feel any the worse for it. I have no conscience, and things don't weigh on my mind at all. I'm a light-minded person."

Looking closely at her, the Young Doctor got a still further insight into the mind and soul of this prairie girl, who used a lid of irony to cover a well of deep feeling. Things did not weigh on her mind! He was sure that pain to the wife of Shiel Crozier would be mortal torture to Kitty Tynan.

"But I felt exactly what I wrote that Derby Day when he broke his pledge, and he ought to know me exactly as I was," urged Mona. "I don't want to deceive him, to appear a bit better than I am."

"Oh, you'd rather lose him!" said Kitty almost savagely. "Knowing how hard it is to keep a man under the best circ.u.mstances, you'd willingly make the circ.u.mstances as bad as they can be--is that it? Besides, weren't you sorry afterwards that you wrote that letter?"

"Yes, yes, desperately sorry."

"And you wished often that your real self had written on Derby Day and not the scratch-cat you were then?"

Mona flushed, but answered bravely, "Yes, a thousand times."

"What business had you to show him your cat-self, your unreal, not your real self on Derby Day five years ago? Wasn't it your duty to show him your real self?"

Mona nodded helplessly. "Yes, I know it was."

"Then isn't it your duty to see that your real self speaks in that letter now?"

"I want him to know me exactly as I am, and then--"

Kitty made a pa.s.sionate gesture. Was ever such an uncomprehending woman as this diamond-b.u.t.ton of a wife?

"And then you would be unhappy ever after instead of being happy ever after. What is the good of prejudicing your husband against you by telling the unnecessary truth. He is desperate, and besides, he has been away from you for five years, and we all change somehow--particularly men, when there are so many women in the world, and very pretty women of all ages and kinds and colours and tastes, and dazzling, deceitful hussies too. It isn't wise for any woman to let her husband or any one at all see her exactly as she is; and only the silly ones do it. They tell what they think is the truth about their own wickedness, and it isn't the truth at all, because I suppose women don't know how to tell the exact truth; and they can be just as unfair to themselves as they are to others. Besides, haven't you any sense of humour, Mrs. Crozier?

It's as good as a play, this. Just think: after five years of desertion, and trouble without end, and it all put right by a little sleight-of-hand. Shall I open it?"

She held the letter up. Mona nodded almost eagerly now, for come of a subtle, social world far away, she still was no match for the subtlety of the wilds--or was it the cunning the wild things know?

Kitty left the room, but in a moment afterwards returned with the letter open. "The kettle on the hob is the friend of the family," she said gaily. "Here it is all ready for what there is to do. You go and keep watch for Mr. Crozier," she added to the Young Doctor. "He won't be gone long, I should think, and we don't want him bursting in on us before I've got that letter safe back into his desk. If he comes, you keep him busy for a moment. When we're quite ready I'll come to the front door, and then you will know it is all right."

"I'm to go while you make up your prescription--all right!" said the Young Doctor, and with a wave of the hand he left the room.

Instantly Kitty brought a lead pencil and paper. "Now sit down and write to him, Mrs. Crozier," she said briskly. "Use discretion; don't gush; slap his face a little for breaking his pledge, and afterwards tell him that you did at the Derby what you had abused him for doing.

Then explain to him about this four thousand pounds--twenty thousand dollars--my, what a lot of money, and all got in one day! Tell him that it was all won by his own cash. It's as easy as can be, and it will be a certainty now."

So saying, she lit a match. "You--hold this wicked old catfish letter into the flame, please, Mrs. Crozier, and keep praying all the time, and please remember that 'our little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes.'"

Mona's small fingers were trembling as she held the fateful letter into the flame, and then in silence both watched it burn to a cinder. A faint, hopeful smile was on Mona's face now.

"What isn't never was to those that never knew," said Kitty briskly, and pushed a chair up to the table. "Now sit down and write, please."

Mona sat down. Taking up a sheet of notepaper she looked at it dubiously.

"Oh, what a fool I am!" said Kitty, understanding the look. "And that's what every criminal does--he forgets something. I forgot the notepaper.

Of course you can't use that notepaper. Of course not. He'd know it in a minute. Besides, the sheet we burned had an engraved address on it. I never thought of that--good gracious!"

"Wait--wait," said Mona, her face lighting. "I may have some sheets in my writing-case. It's only a chance, but there were some loose sheets in it when I left home. I'll go and see."

While she was gone to her bedroom Kitty stood still in the middle of the room lost in reflection, as completely absorbed as though she was seeing things thousands of miles away. In truth, she was seeing things millions of miles away; she was seeing a Promised Land. It was a gift of hers, or a penalty of her life, perhaps, that she could lose herself in reverie at a moment's notice--a reverie as complete as though she was subtracted from life's realities. Now, as she looked out of the door, far over the prairie to a tiny group of pine-trees in the vanishing distance, lines she once read floated through her mind:

"Away and beyond the point of pines, In a pleasant land where the glad grapes be, Purple and pendent on verdant vines, I know that my fate is awaiting me."

What fate was to be hers? There was no joy in her eyes as she gazed.

Mrs. Crozier was beside the table again before she roused herself from her trance.