"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. 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. I can only add to this phase of the hateful conspiracy, that for nineteen years my stepfather received this income, and that he used it to establish his own fortune. By investing what was supposed to be my money, he has won his own way to wealth.
"Mr. Banks decided that the operations were safest from this side of the Atlantic. He and my mother took up their residence in New York, and it has been their home ever since. He spent the first half year after your suspected death in London, solely for the purpose of establishing himself in Lord Brace's favour. Within a year after the death of Lord Brace your father was killed by a poacher on the estate. He had but lately returned from Egypt, and was in full control of the lands and property attached to Brace Hall. If my stepfather had designs upon Brace Hall, they failed, for the lands and the title went at once to your father's cousin, Sir Harry Brace, the present lord.