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 circumstances, you'd willingly
make the circumstances as bad as they can be--is that it? Besides,