“I learned that day that Margaret Barton had known of my marriage with Mona Forester almost from the first, that she had followed us abroad, and came disguised into the very house where we were living; that she had intercepted my letter, telling Mona of my accident, and made the poor child believe that I had deserted her, and that I had not really married her, but simply brought her abroad with me to be the plaything of my season of travel, after which I was pledged to marry her, Margaret Barton.  She repeated this cunning tale to the landlord, and then, when he drove my darling forth into the street, she hired the butler to follow her, and thus give her departure the appearance of an elopement.  It was a plot fit to emanate only from the heart and brain of a fiend, and I wormed it out of her little by little, after the departure of her tool, who had traced her to this country, hoping to get more money for keeping her secret.

“I cannot, neither do I wish to describe the scene that followed this discovery.  I was like a madman for a season, when I learned how I had been duped, how my darling had been wronged and betrayed, and driven to her untimely death, and I closed my heart and my doors forever against Margaret Barton.  I settled an annuity of twenty-five hundred dollars upon her, then taking you, I left San Francisco.  I came to settle in New York.

“You know all the rest, my Mona, but you cannot know how I have longed to own you, my child, and dared not, fearing to alienate your love by confessing the truth.  I am going to conceal this avowal in the secret drawer of the mirror, that I have given you to-day, and some time you will read this story and perhaps pity and forgive your father for the culpable cowardice and wrong-doing of his early life.  That woman stole the certificate of my first marriage and all the trinkets I had given your mother; but I swear to you that Mona Forester was my lawful wife—­that you are our child, and in a few days I shall make my will, so stating, and bequeath to you the bulk of my fortune.  I will also in that document explain the secret of this mirror so that you will have no difficulty in finding this confession, your mother’s rings, and some letters which may be a comfort to you.

“Now, my darling, this is all; but I hope you will not love me less when you learn your mother’s sad story and my weakness and sin in not boldly acknowledging her as my wife before the world.  Oh, if I could hear but once, your dear lips call me ‘father’ I could ask no greater comfort in life—­it would be the sweetest music I have ever heard since I lost my other Mona; yet it cannot be.  But that God may bless you, and give you a happy life, is the earnest prayer of your loving father,

“WALTER RICHMOND MONTAGUE DINSMORE.”

Ray was deeply moved as he finished reading this sad tale.

“It is the saddest story I ever heard,” he said, as he folded the closely written sheets and returned them to Mona, “and Mr. Dinsmore must have suffered very keenly since the discovery of the great wrong done his wife, for his whole confession betrays how sensitive and remorseful he was.”