ned aloud:

"How can I ever tell her?" he cried. "Oh, Mona, Mona! I have tried to
do right by your little girl--I have tried to make her life bright and
happy; must I cloud it now by revealing the wrong and sorrow of yours?
_Must_ I tell her?"

A sob burst from him, and then for some time he lay perfectly still, as
if absorbed in deep thought.

At length he lifted his head, and, with a resolute look on his fine face,
drew some paper before him and began to write rapidly.

At the expiration of half an hour he folded what he had written, put it
in an envelope, and carefully sealed it, then turning it over, wrote "For
Mona" on the back.

This done he took up the mirror which he had but just given the young
girl, pressed hard upon one of the pearl and gold points with which the
frame was thickly studded, and the bottom dropped down like a tiny
drawer, revealing within it a package composed of half a dozen letters
and a small pasteboard box.

The man was deadly pale, and his hands trembled as he took these out and
began to look over the letters.

But, as if the task were too great for him, he almost immediately
replaced them in their envelopes, and restored them to the drawer in the
mirror. Then he uncovered the little box, and two small rings were
exposed to view--one a heavy gold band, the other set with a whole pearl
of unusual size and purity.

"Poor Mona!" he almost sobbed, as he touched them with reverent fingers.
"I shall never be reconciled to your sad fate, and I cannot bring myself
to tell your child the whole truth, at least not now. I will tell her
something--just enough to satisfy her, if she questions me again--the
rest I have written, and I will hide the story with these things in the
mirror; then in my will I will reveal its secret, so that Mona can find
them. She will be older, and perhaps happily settled in life by the time
I get through, and so better able to bear the truth."

He replaced the box and letters in the secret drawer of the mirror, also
the envelope which contained what he had written, after which he
carefully closed it, and returned the royal relic to the box in his desk.

"There! everything is as safe as if it were buried in Mona's grave--no
one would ever think of looking for that history in such a place, and the
secret will never be disclosed until I see fit to reveal it."

He had scarcely completed these arrangements when Mona re-entered the
room, her face bright and smiling,