“No, I will not,” he fiercely replied.

She lifted her eyes, and met his angry glance with one so proudly authoritative that he involuntarily averted his own gaze.

“I beg that you will not cause me to lose all faith in you,” she quietly remarked.

A hot flush surged to his brow, and he instantly stepped aside, looking crestfallen and half-ashamed.

Without another word, Mona passed from the room and entered her own chamber.

As soon as she had closed and locked the door, she sat down, and tried to think over all that had been said about her mother; this one subject filled all her mind to the exclusion of everything else.

But for Louis Hamblin’s last remarks, and the betrayal of his real nature, and his selfish, ignoble purpose, she would have been grieved on his account, but she saw that he was unworthy of her regard, of even one sorrowful thought.

“These papers and keepsakes of which he has told me are mine,” she said to herself; “they belong by right to me, and I must—­I will have them.  That certificate, oh! if I could get but that, I could give myself to Ray without a scruple, and besides I could secure this property which Homer Forester has left to my mother, and then I need not go to Ray quite penniless.  These things must be in either Louis Hamblin’s or Mrs. Montague’s possession—­doubtless they are even now somewhere in the house in West Forty-ninth street.  I shall tell Mr. Corbin immediately upon my return, and perhaps he will know of some way by which they can be compelled to give them up.”

She fell to musing over the matter, little suspecting that the most important treasure of all—­the contested marriage certificate—­had already fallen into her lover’s hands, and was at that moment safely locked in Mr. Corbin’s safe, only awaiting her own and Mrs. Montague’s return from the South to set her right before the world, both as to parentage and inheritance.

Louis Hamblin remained in Mrs. Montague’s parlor until her return from the concert, brooding over the failure of his purpose, and trying to devise some scheme by which he could attain the desire of his heart.

He then gave her a faithful account of his interview with Mona, and they sat far into the night and plotted how best to achieve their object.

Mrs. Montague was now as eager to have Louis marry Mona as she had previously been determined to oppose it.

“I am bound that she shall never go into the Palmer family, if I can prevent it,” she said, with a frowning brow.  “If I am to be mistress of Mr. Palmer’s home, I have no intention of allowing Mona Forester’s child to be a blot on my future happiness.”

“You are complimentary, Aunt Marg, in your remarks regarding my future wife,” Louis sarcastically observed.