“I am sorry—­” she began, falteringly, as she lifted her swimming eyes to his face, and both look and tone stirred him to hot rebellion, for he knew well enough of what she had been thinking.

“How sorry are you?” he cried, in a low, intense tone; “sorry enough to try to do for me what you have bidden me do for another?  Will you crush your love for Ray Palmer, and bestow it upon me?”

Mona recoiled beneath these fierce, hot words, while she inwardly resented the selfishness and rudeness of his question.

Still she tried to make some allowance for his bitter disappointment and evident suffering.

“I do not think you have any right to speak to me like that,” she said, in tones of gentle reproof, though her face was crimson with conscious blushes.

“Have I no right to say to you what you have said to me?” he demanded.  “You have said that no woman should marry a man whom she does not love, while, in the very next breath you bid me go ’seek for some dear, good girl,’ and ask her to marry me, who can never love any woman but you.  Are you considerate—­are you consistent?”

“Perhaps not,” she returned, sorrowfully, “but I did not mean to be inconsistent or to wound you—­I could hardly believe that you cared so deeply!  I hoped you might be mistaken in your assertion that no other affection could be rooted in your heart.”

“There may be other natures besides your own that are capable of tenacious affection,” he retorted, with exceeding bitterness.

“True,” Mona said, sighing heavily, “but,” driven to desperation, and facing him with sudden resolution, “I cannot respond to your suit as you wish; I can never be your wife, for—­perhaps, under the circumstances, I ought to make the confession—­I am already pledged to another.”

CHAPTER XII.

THE SECRET OF THE ROYAL MIRROR.

Mona’s eyes were averted and she was greatly embarrassed as she made the acknowledgment of her engagement, therefore she could not see the look of anger and evil purpose which suddenly swept every expression of tenderness from Louis Hamblin’s face.

He could not speak for a moment, he was so intensely agitated by her confession.

“Of course, I cannot fail to understand you,” he remarked, at last.  “You mean that you are engaged to Ray Palmer, and that accounts for the attentions which he bestowed upon Ruth Richards at Hazeldean.  You two were very clever, but even then I had read between the lines and knew what you have just told me.”

“You knew, and yet presumed to make this avowal?  You dared to ask another man’s promised wife to marry you!” Mona exclaimed, all her embarrassment now gone, her scornful eyes looking straight into his.

“Well, perhaps I should not say I knew, but I surmised,” he confessed, his glance wavering beneath hers.

“That is but a poor apology,” she retorted, in the same tone as before; “you certainly have betrayed but very little respect for me if you even ‘surmised’ the truth, and would ask me to regard my plighted troth so lightly as to break it simply to gratify your own selfishness.”