“Truly, Mr. Rider, your discoveries are somewhat remarkable; but will you allow me to examine that cross?” a new voice here remarked, and Mr. Amos Palmer arose from a mammoth chair at the other end of the drawing-room, where he had been an unseen witness of and listener to all that had occurred during the last half hour.

It was he who had rung the bell just as Mona was about to enter Mrs. Montague’s boudoir in search of her scissors, and who, upon being told that the lady was out, had said he would wait for her.  He had called to ask his fiancee to go with him to select the hangings for the private parlor which he was fitting up for her in his own house.

His face, at this moment, was as colorless as marble; his eyes gleamed with a relentless purpose, and his manner was frigid from the strong curb that he had put upon himself.

At the sound of his voice Mrs. Montague lifted a face upon which utter despair, mingled with abject terror, was written.  She bent one brief, searching glance upon the man, and then shrank back again into the depths of her chair, shivering as with a chill.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOW IT HAPPENED.

Mr. Rider passed Mr. Palmer the diamond cross, which he took without a word, and carefully examined, turning it over and over and scrutinizing both the stones and the setting with the closest attention, though Ray could see that his hands were trembling with excitement, and knew that his heart was undergoing the severest torture.

“Yes,” he said, after an oppressive silence, during which every eye, except Mrs. Montague’s, was fixed upon him, “the cross is ours—­my own private mark is on the back of the setting.  And so,” turning sternly to the wretched woman near him, “you were the thief; you were the unprincipled character who decoyed my son to that retreat for maniacs, and nearly made one of me!  Then, oh! what treachery! what duplicity!  When you feared that the net was closing about you and you would be brought to justice, you sought to make a double dupe of me by a marriage with me, imagining, I suppose, that I would suffer in silence, if the theft was ever discovered, rather than have my name tarnished by a public scandal.  So you have sailed under many characters!” he went on, in a tone of biting scorn.  “You are the Mrs. Bently, of Chicago! the Mrs. Bent, of Boston; Mrs. Vanderbeck and Mrs. Walton, of New York; and the woman in St. Louis, who gave bail for the rascally miner, who tried to dispose of the unset solitaires.  Fortunately those have been proven to be mine and returned to me; but where are the rest of the stones?  I will have them, every one,” he concluded, in a tone so stern and menacing that the woman shivered afresh.

“They were all together—­they were all yours except two; but the cross, we—­we—­”

Mrs. Montague proceeded thus far in a muffled, trembling tone, and then her voice utterly failed her.