“Oh, I am sure that this is a picture of my mother,” she murmured, with bated breath, as, with reverent touch, she lifted it and gazed long and earnestly upon it.

“If you could but speak and tell me all that sad story—­what caused that man to desert you in the hour of your greatest need!” she continued, with starting tears, for the eyes, so life-like, looking into hers, seemed to be seeking for sympathy and comfort.  “Oh, how cruel it all was, and why should those last few weeks of your life have been so shrouded in mystery?”

She fell to musing sadly, with the picture still in her hands, and became so absorbed in her thoughts that she was almost unconscious of everything about her, or that she was neglecting her duties, until she suddenly felt a heavy hand upon her shoulders, and Mrs. Montague suddenly inquired: 

“Ha! where did you get that picture?  Why don’t you attend to your work, and not go prying about among my things?” and she searched the girl’s face with a keen glance.

Mona was quick to think and act, for she felt that now was her opportunity, if ever.

“I was not prying,” she quietly responded.  “I thought I would pack everything nicely from the bottom of the trunk, and as I took out the cloth to shake and smooth it, I found this picture lying beneath it.  I was very much startled to find how much it resembles me.  Who can she be, Mrs. Montague?” and Mona lifted a pair of innocently wondering eyes to the frowning face above her.

For a moment the woman seemed to be trying to read her very soul; then she remarked, through her set teeth: 

“It is more like you, or you are more like it than I thought.  Did you never see a picture like it before?”

“No, never,” Mona replied, so positively that Mrs. Montague could not doubt the truth of her statement.  “Is it the likeness of some relative of yours?” she asked, determined if possible to sift the matter to the bottom.

“A relative?  No, I hope not.  The girl’s name was Mona Forester, and—­I hated her!”

“Mona Forester!” repeated Mona to herself, with a great inward start, though she made no outward sign, while a feeling of bitter disappointment swept over her heart.

It could not then have been a picture of her mother, she thought, for her name must have been Mona Dinsmore, unless—­strange that she had not thought of it when she read that advertisement in the paper—­unless she had been the half-sister of her Uncle Walter.

“You hated her?” Mona murmured aloud, with her tender, devouring glance fastened upon the beautiful face.

The tone and emphasis seemed to arouse all the passion of the woman’s nature.

“Yes, with my whole soul!” she fiercely cried, and before Mona was aware of her intention, she had snatched the picture from her hands, and torn it into four pieces.

“There!” she continued, tossing the fragments upon the floor, “that is the last of that; I am sure!  I don’t know why I have kept the miserable thing all these years.”