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.”