"I cannot--I will not give you up," he said, between his tightly locked teeth.
"You will be kind enough to let me pa.s.s, Mr. Hamblin." Mona returned, and ignoring his excited a.s.sertion.
"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 pa.s.sed 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, ign.o.ble 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.serted 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.