"She was married--to an unfrocked parson. But, according to her own account, she was more than his match. A perfect limb! And as clever as she was wicked--one of those wicked women who are born, not made, for she was not yet twenty-one. I told her all about you. I said that if, through her, you married the doctor's daughter at Swaffham-on-Sea, she should have five hundred pounds upon your wedding-day. She came into the scheme at once. So we arranged it all together. "Among other things, her husband was one of those scamps who pose, in the advertisement sheets, as distressed clergymen whose large families depend for sustenance on their being able to dispose of some article or other at one-third of its cost price. Just then his line was apostle spoons--which he bought for five shillings and sold for twenty. I was to summon you up to town. I was to bully you about your marriage. And then, when I had thoroughly upset you--which, I explained to her, it was the easiest thing in the world to do--I was to call your attention to his advertisement of the apostle spoons. I was to march you off then and there to buy them. When I had got you into her house I was to leave the rest to her. "She was to pose as her husband's daughter, which she was young enough to be--in years, at any rate. She said that if I brought you to her in a state of agitation and confusion bordering on imbecility--which I undertook to do--and if you were the sort of man I had described to her, within half an hour she would induce you to use language which might be construed into an offer of marriage. Then, with her husband's aid, she would so drive you to distraction as to send you flying into Miss Bayley's arms as into a harbour of refuge. "I need not describe to you how she succeeded--though we had neither of us bargained that you would be _quite_ the fool you were. When I heard of your eloping with the doctor's daughter the instant 'Miss Vesey' put in an appearance on the scene, I owned that I had at last attained to one article of faith--an implicit belief in the infinite capacity for folly to be found in the human animal in trousers. "It is unnecessary, under these circumstances, to say that I congratulate you upon your marriage. I hope that your wife will be a sensible woman, and present you, without loss of time, with a son--or, better still, with half a dozen, so that I may have an opportunity of finding at least _one_ among them who shall not be _quite_ such a fool as his father.--Your affectionate aunt, "JANET MACLEOD (of Pittenquhair)."