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."
"And your respect for me has waned accordingly, I suppose you would be
glad to add," Louis Hamblin interposed, with a sneer.
Mona made him no answer. She began to think that she had overestimated
the purity of his motives--that all her recent sympathy had been expended
upon an unworthy object.
"You will not forget, however, that I made the promise to surrender
certain proofs and keepsakes conditional upon your yielding to my suit,"
he added, with cold resoluteness.
"No honorable man would make such conditions with the woman he professed
to love," retorted Mona, with curling lips.
"A man, when he is desperate, will adopt almost any measure to achieve
his object," her companion responded, hotly.
"We will not argue the matter further, if you please," Mona said,
frigidly, as she took up her book, which she had laid upon the table
when she arose, and started to leave the room.
"Mona, do not go away like this--you shall not leave me in such a mood!"
the young man cried, as he placed himself in her path. "Do you not see
that I am filled with despair--that I am desperate?"
"I am sorry," she answered, gravely, "but I can tell you nothing
different--my answer is final, and your own sense of what is right
should make you realize and submit to it."
"Then you do not care for the marriage certificate and other proofs?" he
said.
Again the young girl's lips curled with infinite scorn.
"Did you suppose that my love and my hand were, like articles of
merchandise, to be bought and sold?" she asked, with scathing sarcasm.
"Yes, I do care for--I do want the proofs; but they are not to be
mentioned in connection with such sacred subjects," she went on, with
dignity. "If you were really my friend you would never have suggested
anything of the kind; you would have been glad to help me to any proof
that would relieve my mind and heart from the harassing doubts regarding
the history of my parents. If such proofs exist, as you claim, they
rightly _belong_ to me, and you are uncourteous, not to say dishonorable,
in keeping them from me."
"People are not in the habit of resigning important documents simply for
the sake of preserving themselves from the charge of discourtesy," Louis
laconically observed.
"I am to understand from that, I suppose, that you will not give them to
me," Mona remarked. "Well, since I _know_ that there was no blame or
shame attached to my mother--since I know that she was only a victim to
the wickedness of others--it will not matter so very much if I do not
have the tangible proofs you possess, and I must try to be content
without them."
She made another attempt to leave the room, but he still stood in her
way.
"I cannot--I will not give you up," he said, between his tightly locked
teeth.
"You will be kind enough to let me pass, Mr. Hamblin." Mona returned, and
ignoring his excited assertion.
"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.
"I can't help it, Louis. I bear the girl no good-will, as you have known
from the first, and you must make up your mind to accept matters as they
are. You are determined to have her and I have given my consent to the
marriage from purely selfish motives," Mrs. Montague returned, in a
straightforward, matter-of-fact tone. "I would never have consented,"
she added, with a frown "if I had not feared that there is proof--besides
what we possess--of Mona Forester's legal marriage, and that through it
we might some time lose our fortune. I should be in despair to be obliged
to give it up--life without plenty of money is not worth living, and I
consider that I was very shrewd and fortunate in getting possession of
that certificate and those other things."
"Did you bring them with you when you left home?"
"No; I never thought of them," Mrs. Montague responded, with a start and
a look of anxiety. "It is the first time I ever came away from home
without them; but after I received that telegram and letter I had plenty
on my mind, I assure you--my chief aim was to get that girl out of New
York, and away to some safe place where we could work out our scheme."
"But you ought never to leave such valuables behind," said her nephew;
"the house might take fire, and they would be all destroyed."
"That would be but a small loss," the woman retorted. "I have thought a
hundred times that I would throw them all into the fire, and thus blot
out of existence all that remained of the girl I so hated; but whenever
I have attempted to do so I have been unaccountably restrained. But I
will do it as soon as we get home again," she resolutely concluded.
Louis Hamblin's eyes gleamed with a strange expression at this threat;
but he made no reply to it.
"But let us settle this matter of your marriage," she resumed, after a
moment of thought. "The girl shall marry you--I have brought her here for
that purpose, and if she will not be reasoned into compliance with our
wishes, she shall be compelled or tricked into it. But how, is the
question."
"I will agree to almost anything, so that I get her," remarked her
nephew, with a grim smile.
The clock on the mantel-piece struck two before they separated, but they
had decided on their plan of action, and only awaited the coming day to
develop it.
Meanwhile strange things had been happening in Mona's room.
We left her musing over her recent interview with Louis, and deeply
absorbed in making plans to obtain possession of the proofs of her
mother's marriage, which he had asserted he could produce.
The more she thought of the matter the more determined she became to
accomplish her purpose, and she began to grow very anxious to return
to New York to consult with Ray and Mr. Corbin.
"I wonder how much longer Mrs. Montague intends to remain here," she
murmured. "She said she should return within a fortnight, but nearly that
time has expired already. I cannot understand her object in prolonging
her stay, since she was disappointed about coming with the party. I
believe I will ask her to-morrow how soon we are to go back."
Mona felt very weary after the unusual excitement of the evening; her
nerves were also considerably unstrung, and she resolved not to wait for
Mrs. Montague's return, but retire at once.
She arose and began to prepare for bed, but having sent some clothing
away to be washed that morning, she found that her night-robe had gone
with the other articles, and unlocking her trunk, she began to look
for another.
"I thought I put an extra one in the tray," she mused, as she searched
for but failed to find it.
This obliged her to remove the tray and to unpack some of the contents
beneath.
While thus employed she took out a box, and without thinking what it
contained, carelessly set it across a corner of the trunk.
She finally found the garment she needed, and then began to replace the
clothing which she had been obliged to remove during her search.
While thus engaged she turned suddenly to reach for something that had
slipped from her grasp, and in the act she hit her elbow against the box
setting on the corner of her trunk, and knocked it to the floor.
"Oh! my mirror!" she cried, in a voice of terror, and hastily gathering
up the box, uncovered it to see if the precious relic had been injured.
To her great joy she found that it had not been broken by the fall; but
as she lifted it from the box, to examine it still further, the bottom of
the frame dropped out, and with it the things which Mr. Dinsmore had
concealed within it.
"Mercy!" Mona excitedly exclaimed; "it looks like a little drawer, and
here are some letters and a box which some one has hidden in it! Can it
be that these things once belonged to Marie Antoinette, and have been
inclosed in this secret place all these long years?" she wonderingly
questioned.
"No, surely not, for they would be yellow with age," she continued, as
she began to examine them.
"Ah!" with a start, and growing pale, "here is a letter addressed to
me--_For Mona_--and in Uncle Walter's handwriting! He must have known
about the secret of this mirror, and put these letters here with some
special object in view. What can it mean?"
She grew dizzy--almost faint with the excitement of her discovery, and
the things dropped from her nerveless fingers upon her lap.
"There is some secret here!" she whispered, as she gazed down at them, an
expression of dread in her startled eyes. "Perhaps it is the secret which
I have so long wanted to know! Can it be that the mystery of my mother's
sad fate is about to be solved--that Uncle Walter had not the courage to
tell me all, that never-to-be-forgotten morning, but wrote it out and hid
it here for me to find later? Ah!" and she lifted her head as if suddenly
recalling something, "this was what he tried to make me understand the
day he died! He sent me for the mirror, not to remind me to keep it
always, as I thought at the time, but to explain the secret of it, so
that I could find what he had hidden here. Oh, how he suffered because he
could not show me! Why could I not have understood?" and her tears fell
thick and fast, as she thus lived over again that painful experience.
She soon brushed them away, however, and lifting the mirror, examined it
carefully.
She found that the tiny drawer would shove smoothly in and out, and she
pushed it almost in, but took care not to quite close it.
"There must be a spring somewhere to hold it in place," she murmured,
regarding it curiously. "Ah! now I feel it! But how is it operated? How
can the drawer be opened again if I shut it entirely?"
She looked the mirror over most carefully, both on the back and front,
but at first could detect nothing. But at length, as she still continued
to work the drawer in and out, she noticed that the central pearl and
gold point at the top of the frame moved slightly as she pressed the
drawer close upon the spring, and she believed that she had discovered
the Secret of the Royal Mirror.
With a resolute air she shut it entirely and heard the click of the
spring as it shot into its socket. Her reason told her that pressure
applied to that central point of pearl and gold would at once release
the drawer again.
She tried it, and instantly it dropped out upon her lap.
"It is the strangest thing in the world. I feel almost as if I had opened
a grave," she murmured, a shiver running along her nerves. "My heart
almost fails me when I think of examining its contents--this letter
addressed to me, this package of letters, and the tiny box. I wonder
what there is in it?"
She looked strangely beautiful as she sat there upon the floor, her face
startlingly pale, her eyes seeming larger than ever, with that wondering
expression in their liquid depths, while she turned that little box over
and over in her trembling hands, as if she tried to gather courage to
untie the string that bound its cover on and look within it.
At last she threw up her head with a determined air, gathered up all the
things she had found in the secret drawer, and rising, drew a chair to
her table, where she sat down to solve the mystery.