f 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