"Cousin Betty" seemed to be explaining and justifying a thing that "Jim" had done.
"It was partly a joke, and partly earnest, but it had a good motive," wrote Betty. "I guessed, the morning your really very conceited letter about the New York introductions came, that Jim had something quaint up his sleeve, to spring upon you when you'd arrived in America, but I didn't know what. To tell the truth, Val, I was even more disgusted than Jim, by your cool way of assuming that you had only to show yourself on the other side, to pick and choose among all the nicest as well as richest girls. I should have loved to box your ears, and I said 'Of course we won't give him any letters, and I'll tell him just what we think of him. Then maybe he won't go.' But Jim said 'Yes, we will give him the letters, and he shall go. We may find another way of teaching him a lesson, a way that will do him good if he's worth being done good to.'
"That was all, and as Jim didn't refer to the subject again after we posted the letters of introduction, the conversation slipped my mind. I didn't think any more about it until weird things began to be copied into London papers from New York ones, and your mother wired Jim to ask what, if anything, could be done to punish Foxham. You see, she thought you were on the Baltic.
"Jim soothed all her worries, so you needn't be anxious about her, as of course you would if you thought she'd been alarmed. When I saw paragraphs in the papers I talked to Jim, and it was only then that he told me what he'd done; how it was all his fault really, and he was very sorry, because everything had turned out a lot worse for you than he'd ever dreamed of wanting it to be. 'Fate took a hand in the game, and played it for all it was worth,' Jim said.
"It seems that Foxham, your man, asked Jim to cash a cheque signed by you, one night not long ago (don't you remember when he and I were at Battlemead, and you came down for Saturday to Monday?). Jim suspected something wrong, but wouldn't speak to you till he'd made sure, because that wouldn't have been fair, and Foxham was such an invaluable valet. A few days later, when Jim was making enquiries about the man, he found out that the horrid creature had actually impersonated you at two or three hotels, and run up bills in your name. It was the very evening before your letter about America came that Jim got the first part of this information, and day by day more kept coming in, up to the time when we heard Foxham had given you notice. All along Jim was thinking out the idea of that lesson for you—the joke that was to be half in earnest—and then, when Mr. VanderPot couldn't sail in the Mauretania, the whole plan was mapped out, without a word being said, even to me.
"Of course, I want to assure you again (and Jim will write a postscript) that he meant nothing worse to happen to you than a disappointment, and a blow to your conceit. He telegraphed to several of the people to whom you had letters, saying that if a person turned up calling himself by your name, before the Baltic landed, they'd better wait and make sure before being nice to you, that you weren't your own absconding valet sailing under false colours. He didn't say it wouldn't be you, and he supposed that his friends would simply hang back for a few days, making no sign, thus giving you to think that you weren't as important in America as you'd fancied. He imagined, too, that the heiress business wouldn't come off quite as easily as you expected, and that altogether you might be a little sobered down. As for your trouble with the bank, we know now, that this is what happened: It turns out that Henry van Cotter has lately become a partner in the bank which corresponds with yours in London, and having got Jim's wire about the valet (probably at the same time when instructions arrived from the London and Southern), naturally he told his people to be prepared, and not to pay. How could Jim think of such a thing happening—or that Mr. van Cotter and the others would run about gossiping of what he told them as a mere supposition? It must have been too dreadful for you at the hotel!—and as for that Mr. Milton, I'm sure he is a horror.
"Then, it was another contretemps that neither Jim nor I saw the newspapers at first. We'd gone off on a motor trip, as the weather was lovely, and were darting all about Cornwall and Wales, starting so early every morning, and not arriving at hotels till so late at night, that we didn't bother with the papers for nearly a week. Of course the minute Jim knew what had been going on, he wired everywhere, and wrote long letters of explanation, too (a little earlier than he'd originally meant), to put an end to the misunderstanding he'd set in motion. But meanwhile you'd disappeared from New York. Poor dear, my heart quite bleeds for you! And yet—and yet—I wonder if all that you've gone through is entirely a matter for regret?"
It was here, after the "Affectionate Cousin Betty" signature, that the other handwriting began.
"I wonder, too? I want to know what you think about it. Now it's all explained, and you see just where and how much I'm to blame for what's past, you may or may not be inclined to forgive me for trying to play Providence, that good might come of evil. But if there are any things which you don't regret, perhaps you'll partly understand—yourself and me. Anyhow, I apologise, having now done my best to atone, in case you want to go back to New York in a blaze of glory and be made a lion of. Meanwhile, I await your verdict, and am—as the writers of anonymous letters are supposed to sign themselves—'your friend and well-wisher,' Jim."
Again Fate had "taken a hand in the game," and used Miss Moon as catspaw. Into the fire in her bedroom at Bonnerstown went all those elaborate explanations; and Loveland did not dream that he had only to communicate with the bank in New York to receive apologies and a sum of money which, after his vicissitudes, would have seemed a fortune. He had not even a prophetic "pricking in his thumbs" while his mother's post office order for three hundred dollars—sixty pounds—gaily burned in a Bonnerstown stove. He had no suspicion that New York Society—or an important section of it—was wearing sackcloth and ashes on his account. No instinct told him that even while the letters and money order were being reduced to ashes, Tony Kidd was concocting a glorious "story" about the Marquis of Loveland, which would ring through the country; neither did he know that Lesley Dearmer, whether believing him a genuine article or not, had sent him an anonymous donation which lay unclaimed at the Waldorf-Astoria.