Mrs. Montague was in a terrible pa.s.sion after her lawyer had left. She sprang to her feet and paced the floor from end to end, with angry steps, her face almost convulsed with malice and hatred.

"Can it be possible that I am going to have that battle to fight over again, after all these years?" she muttered; "that the child is going to rise up to avenge the wrongs of her mother? What if she does? Why need I fear her? I have held my own so far, and I will make a tough fight to do so in the future. Possession is said to be nine points in law and I shall hold on to my money like grim death. I never could--I never will give up these luxuries," she cried, sweeping a covetous glance around the exquisitely furnished room. "I plotted for them--I sold my soul for them and him, now they are mine--mine, and no one shall take them from me!

Mona Forester, how I hated you!--how I hate your daughter, even though I have never seen her!--how I almost hate that girl up stairs for her strange resemblance to you. I would have sent her out of the house long ago for it, if she had not been so good and faithful a seamstress, and needful to me in many ways. She, herself, saw the resemblance to that picture--By the way," she interposed, with a start, "I wonder if she obeyed me about that crayon the other day! If she didn't--if she kept it I shall be tempted to believe--I'll find out, anyhow."

With a somewhat anxious look on her face, the woman hurried up stairs to her room.

Upon reaching it she rang an imperative peal upon her bell.

Mary presently made her appearance, and one quick glance told her that something had gone wrong with her mistress.

"Bring me a pitcher of ice-water," curtly commanded Mrs. Montague. "And, Mary--"

"Yes, marm."

"Did Miss Richards give you a torn picture the other day?"

"Yes, marm," answered the girl, flushing, "she said you wanted it burned."

"Did you burn it?"

"N-o, marm, somehow I couldn't make up my mind to put it in the fire; it was such a pretty face, and so like Miss Richards, and I've been wanting a picture of her ever since she came here, only I thought maybe she'd resent it if I asked her for one; and so I pasted it together as well as I could, and tacked it up in my room," the girl explained, volubly, and concluded by meekly adding: "I hope there was no harm in it, marm."

"You may bring it to me," was all the reply that Mrs. Montague vouchsafed her attendant; and Mary, looking rather crestfallen, withdrew to obey the command.

"It is a shame to burn it," she muttered, as she took down the defaced picture, and slowly returned down stairs; "but I'm glad Miss Ruth gave it to me before she asked for it."

Mrs. Montague sprang up the moment the girl entered the room, and s.n.a.t.c.hing the portrait from her hands, dashed it upon the bed of glowing coals in the grate.

"When I give an order I want it obeyed," she said, imperiously. "Now go and bring me the water."

Mary withdrew again, wondering what could have happened to make her mistress so out of sorts, and finally came to the conclusion that the lawyer must have brought her bad news.

"There! that is the last of that!" Mrs. Montague said, as she watched the flames curl about the beautiful face in the grate. "I'm glad the girl didn't keep the picture herself; I believe that all my previous suspicions would have been aroused if she had. It _can't_ be that _she_ is Mona's child, for she has always been so indifferent when I have questioned her. Possibly she may be a descendant of some other branch of the family, and does not know it. My only regret is that I did not try to see that other girl before Walter Dinsmore died; then I should have been sure. I wonder where she can be? And to think that Mona Forester should have had an uncle to turn up just at this time! I didn't suppose she had a relative in the world besides the child."

Her musings were cut short at this point by the return of Mary with the water. She poured out a gla.s.sful for her mistress, and then was told that she might go.

The lady set down the gla.s.s without even tasting its contents; then rising, went to the door and locked it, after which she walked to a small table which stood in a bay-window, and removed the marble top, carefully laying it upon the floor.

This act revealed instead of the usual skeleton stand where a marble top is used a polished table of solid cherry, with what appeared to be a lid in the top, and in which there was a small bra.s.s-bound key-hole.

Drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket, Mrs. Montague selected a tiny one from among the others, inserted it in the lock, and the next moment the lid in the table was lifted, thus revealing a secret compartment underneath.

This was filled with various things--paper boxes, packages of various forms and sizes, together with some doc.u.ments and letters.

Drawing a chair before the table, the woman sat down and began to examine the letters.

There was an intensely bitter expression on her face--a frown on her brow, a sneer on her lips--which so disfigured it that scarcely any one would have recognized her as the brilliant and beautiful woman of the world who so charmed every one in society.

There were perhaps a dozen letters in the package which she took out of the table, and these, as she untied the ribbon that bound them together, and slipped them through her fingers, were all addressed in a delicate and beautiful style of penmanship.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed one from the others, and pa.s.sionately tore it across, envelope and all. Then she suddenly dropped them on her lap, a shiver running over her, her cheek paling with some inward emotion.

"Ugh! they give me a ghostly feeling! My flesh creeps! I feel almost as if Mona Forester herself were standing beside me, and had laid her dead hand upon me. I cannot look them over--I will tie them up again and burn them all at once," she muttered, in a hoa.r.s.e tone.

She gathered them up, and hastily wound the ribbon about them, laying them upon the table beside her, then proceeded with her examination of the other contents of the secret compartment.

CHAPTER V.

MONA DECLINES A PROPOSAL.

Mrs. Montague next took a square pasteboard box from the secret compartment in the table, and opened it.

On a bed of pure white cotton there lay some exquisite jewelry. A pearl and diamond cross, a pair of unusually large whole pearls for the ears, and two narrow but costly bands for the wrists, set with the same precious gems.

"Pearls!" sneered the woman, giving the box, with its contents, an angry shake. "He used to call her his 'pearl,' and so, forsooth, he had to represent his estimate of her in some tangible form. There is nothing of the pearl-like nature about me," she continued, with a short, bitter laugh. "I am more like the cold, glittering diamond, and give me pure crystallized carbon every time in preference to any other gem. He wasn't n.i.g.g.ardly with her on that score, either," she concluded, lifting the upper layer of cotton, and revealing several diamond ornaments beneath.

"She was a proud little thing, though," she mused, after gazing upon them in silence for a moment, "to go off and leave all these trinkets behind her. I'd have taken them with me and made the most of them. They haven't done me much good, however, since they came into my possession. I never could wear them without feeling as I did just now about the letters. I might have sold them, I suppose, and I don't know why I haven't done so, unless it is because they are all marked."

She covered them and threw the box from her with a pa.s.sionate gesture, and then searched for a moment in silence among the remaining contents of the table.

She finally found what she wanted, apparently, for a look of triumph swept over her face.

It was a folded doc.u.ment, evidently of parchment.

"Ha, ha! prove your shrewd inferences, my keen-witted lawyer, if you can," she muttered, exultantly, as she unfolded it, and ran her eyes over it. "Mona Forester's child the heir to the bulk of my husband's property, indeed! Perhaps, but she will have to prove it before she can get it. How fortunate that I helped myself to these precious keepsakes when he was off his guard; even he did not dream that I had this," and she shook the parchment until it rattled noisily through the room; then refolding it, she put it carelessly aside, and turned once more to what remained to be examined.

"Here is that exquisite point-lace fan," she said, lifting a long, narrow box, and removing the lid. "I never had a point-lace fan until I bought it for myself; and here is that picture; I never had his likeness painted on ivory and set in a frame of rubies! Ha! Miss Mona, you were a favored wench, but your triumph was of short duration."

It is impossible to convey any idea of the bitterness of the woman's tone, or the vindictiveness of her look, as she took from a velvet case the picture of a handsome young man, of perhaps twenty-five years, painted on ivory, and encircled with a costly frame of gold set with rubies.

"You loved her," she cried, fiercely, as she gazed with all her soul in her eyes upon that attractive face, while her whole frame shook with emotion. "Nothing was too costly or elegant for your petted darling; her slightest wish was your law, while for me you had scarcely a word or a look of affection; you were like ice upon which not even the lava-tide of my idolatry could make the slightest impression. Is it any wonder that I hated her for having absorbed all that I craved? Is it strange that I exulted when they drove her from her apartments in Paris, believing her to be a thing too vile to be tolerated by respectable people. Well, she had his love, but I had him--I vowed that I would win, and--I did."

But, evidently, the memory of her triumph was not a very comforting one, for she suddenly dropped her face upon the hands that still clasped the picture, and burst into a torrent of tears, while deep sobs shook her frame, and she seemed utterly overwhelmed by the tempest of her grief.

Surely in this woman's nature there were depths which no one, who had seen her the center of attraction in the thronged and brilliant drawing-rooms in high-life, would have believed possible to her.

Suddenly, in the midst of this unusual outburst, there came a knock upon the door.

The sound seemed to give her a terrible start in her nervous state.

She half sprang from her chair, a look of guilt and fear sweeping over her flushed and tear-stained face, the table before her gave a sudden lurch, and before she could put out her hand to save it, it went over and fell to the floor with a crash, spilling its contents, and snapping the lid to the secret compartment short off at its hinges.

"What is it?--who is there?" Mrs. Montague demanded, as she went toward the door, while she tried to control her trembling voice to speak naturally.