ld need but
very little of the ill-gotten wealth upon which she had been flourishing
so extravagantly of late. But she simply replied, in a cold, resolute
tone:

"I certainly feel that I am entitled to the property which my father
wished me to have."

"Indeed! then you have changed your mind since the night when you so
indignantly affirmed to Louis that you did not wish to profit by so much
as a dollar from the man who had so wronged your mother," sneered her
companion, bitterly.

"Certainly," calmly returned Mona, "now that I know the truth. My father
did my mother no willful wrong, although in his morbid grief and
sensitiveness he imputed such wrong to himself, and never ceased to
reproach himself for it. You alone," Mona continued, with stern
denunciation, "are guilty of the ruin of their happiness and lives; you
alone will have to answer for it. You have been a very wicked woman, Mrs.
Montague, not only in connection with your schemes regarding them, but
in your corruption of the morals of your nephew. I should suppose your
conscience would never cease to reproach you for having reared him to
such a life of crime. You will have to answer for that also."

Mrs. Montague shivered visibly at these words, thus betraying that she
was not altogether indifferent to her accountability.

But she quickly threw off the feeling, or the outward appearance of it,
and tossing her head defiantly, she remarked:

"I do not know who has made you my mentor, Miss Dinsmore; but there is
one thing more that I wish you to explain to me--how came that detective
to be in my house?"

"He was passing in the street, and I asked him to come in," Mona replied.

"Indeed! and where, pray, did you make the acquaintance of the high-toned
Mr. Rider?" sarcastically inquired Mrs. Montague.

"In St. Louis."

"In St. Louis!" the woman repeated, astonished.

"Yes. You doubtless remember the day that I rode with you and your nephew
in the street-car, when you were both disguised."

"Yes, but did you know us at that time?"

"No, I only recognized the dress you had on."

"Ah! What a fool I was ever to wear it the second time," sighed the
wretched woman, regretfully.

"I knew it was very like in both color and texture the piece of goods
that Mr. Palmer had once shown me. I was almost sure when I saw that it
had been mended that it was the same dress that Mrs. Vanderbeck had worn
when she stole the Palmer diamonds, and immediately telegraphed