But she flew to her room and brought the royal mirror to him, and he tried to make her understand that there was something he wished to explain in connection with it.

We who have learned the secret of it, know what he wanted, but he could not even lift his nerveless hand to show her the gilded point beneath which lay the spring that controlled the hidden drawer and its contents.

Mona asked him question after question, but all that she could elicit were sighs, while great tears welled up into the man’s eyes and rolled over his cheeks; and when at last a groan of agony burst from him, she could bear it no longer, and went weeping from the room, bearing the ancient relic from his sight.

She remained in her own room a few moments to compose herself before going back to him, and during her absence, Mr. Graves went up to him with the will which he had hastily drafted.

Mr. Dinsmore had had some conversation with him, in a general way, about the matter previous to this, and so he had drawn up the instrument to cover every point that he could think of.  He read it aloud, and Mr. Dinsmore signified his satisfaction with it, and yet he looked troubled, as if it did not quite cover all that he desired.

Doctor Hammond and the housekeeper were summoned to act as witnesses; then Mr. Graves placed the pen, filled with ink, within the sick man’s fingers, for him to sign the will.  But he could not hold it—­there was no strength, no power in them.

In vain they clasped them around it, and urged him to “try;” but they instantly fell away, the pen dropped upon the snowy counterpane making a great, unsightly blotch of ink, and they knew that he was past putting his signature, or even his mark, to the will.

As he himself realized this, a shrill cry of despair burst from him, and the next instant he lapsed into unconsciousness from a second stroke.

“The end has come—­he will not live an hour,” gravely remarked Doctor Hammond, as his skilled fingers sought the dying man’s feeble pulse.

In half that time Walter Dinsmore was dead, and Mona Montague was alone in the world.

We will pass over the next few days, with their mournful incidents and the despairing grief of the beautiful girl, who had been so sadly bereft, to the morning after the funeral ceremonies, when Mr. Graves, with Mr. Dinsmore’s unsigned will in his pocket, called to consult with Mona regarding her uncle’s affairs and her own plans for the future.

He found her in the library, looking sad and heavy-eyed from almost incessant weeping, her manner languid and drooping.

She was engaged in trying to make up some accounts which the housekeeper had requested her to attend to, hoping thus to distract her mind somewhat from her grief.

She burst into tears as the lawyer kindly took her hand, for the sight of him brought back to her so vividly the harrowing scenes of that last day of her idolized uncle’s life.