st on the Fall River
boat.

Mrs. Montague hastened her preparations and left her elegant home on West
Forty-ninth street in season to meet her nephew a little after the hour
appointed in the morning. Mr. Corbin previous to this handed her the
first payment of her annuity, and obtained an address to which it was to
be sent in the future, and thus the two accomplished sharpers disappeared
from New York society, which knew them no more.

The next evening Ray and Mona were talking over their plans for the
future, in the cozy library in Mr. Graves' house, when the young girl
remarked:

"Ray, would you not like to read the story that my father concealed in
the royal mirror?"

"Yes, dear, if you wish me," her lover replied.

Mona excused herself and went to get it. When she returned she brought
the ancient keepsake with her.

She explained how the secret drawer operated, showed him the two rings
and the letters, then putting Mr. Dinsmore's confession into his hands,
bade him read it; and this is what his eager eyes perused:

"MY DEAR MONA:--You who have been the darling of my heart, the pride of
my life; you have just left me, to go to your caller, after having probed
my heart to its very core. I can never make you know the bitterness of
spirit that I experience, as I write these lines, for the questions you
have just asked me have completely unmanned me--have made a veritable
coward of me when I should have boldly told you the truth, let the
consequence be what it would; whether it would have touched your heart
with pity and fresh love for a sorrowing and repentant man, or driven you
away from me in hate and scorn such as I experience for myself. You have
just told me that I have made your life a very happy one; that you love
me dearly. Oh, my darling, you will never know, until I am gone, how I
hug these sweet words to my soul, and exult over them with secret joy,
and you will never know, either, until then, how I long and hunger to
hear you call me just once by the sacred name 'father,'

"Yes, Mona, I am your father; you are my child, and yet I had not the
courage to tell you so, with all the rest of the sad story, this morning,
for fear I should see all the love die out of your face, and you would
turn coldly from me as you learned the great wrong I once did your
mother.

"I told you that your father is dead. So he is, to you, and has been for
many long years; for when I brought you from England, when you were o