“My poor child, your remark only makes my burden all the heavier,” the gentleman returned, in an unsteady voice.  “Alas, my trouble is all on your account, for I am the bearer of ill news for you.”

“Ill news—­to me?” exclaimed the young girl, in a wondering tone.  “After losing Uncle Walter, it does not seem as if any trouble could move me; nothing can compare with that,” she concluded, passionately.

“Very true; but there are other troubles in life besides death,” said Mr. Graves, gently; “such as—­the loss of fortune, poverty—­”

“Do you mean that I am to have no fortune—­that I am to be poor?” exclaimed Mona, astonished.

“Ah, I fear that it is so.”

“How can that be possible?  Uncle Walter was very rich, wasn’t he?  I certainly understood you to say so.”

“Yes, I did; and I find, on looking into his affairs, that he was worth even more than I had previously supposed.”

“Well, then, what can you mean?  I am his only near relative, and you said that I should inherit everything,” Mona said with a perplexed look.

“I know I did, and I thought so at that time; but, Mona, I was waited upon by a noted lawyer only a few days ago, and he claims the whole of your uncle’s great wealth for another.”

“Why, who can it possibly be?” cried the girl in amazement.

“Your uncle’s wife, or, I should say, his widow.”

“My uncle’s wife?” repeated Mona, with a dazed look “Uncle Walter had no wife!”

“Are you sure?”

“Why, yes, of course.  I have always lived with him, ever since I can remember, and there has been no one else in the family except the servants and the housekeeper.  I am sure—­I think—­and yet—­”

Mona abruptly paused as she remembered a remark which her uncle had made to her on her eighteenth birthday.  He had said:  “You have taken the place of the little girl who never lived to call me father, and—­you have helped me to bear other troubles also.”

Could it be possible, she now asked herself, that her uncle had had domestic troubles, that there had been a separation from his wife, and that this had been a life-long sorrow to him?

She had always supposed that his wife was dead, for he would never speak of her, nor allow Mona to ask him any questions.  From her earliest childhood she had somehow seemed to know that she must not refer in any way to such a subject.

“Ah, I see that you are in some doubt about it,” Mr. Graves observed.  “The matter stands thus, however:  A woman, claiming to be Mrs. Walter Dinsmore, has presented her claim to her husband’s property.  She proves herself, beyond the possibility of doubt, to be what she pretends, bringing her marriage certificate and other papers to substantiate her title.  She asserts that about a year after her marriage with Mr. Dinsmore they had trouble—­of what nature I do not know—­and the feeling between them was so irreconcilable they agreed to part, Mr. Dinsmore allowing her a separate maintenance.  They were living in San Francisco at the time.  There was no divorce, but they never met afterward, Mr. Dinsmore coming East, while she remained in California.  She says there was a child—­”