hen I accidentally overheard a conversation between her and
the man who had been her accomplice in ruining your mother's happiness
and mine. That elopement, so called, had always seemed utterly
inexplicable to me until then.

"I learned that day that Margaret Barton had known of my marriage with
Mona Forester almost from the first, that she had followed us abroad, and
came disguised into the very house where we were living; that she had
intercepted my letter, telling Mona of my accident, and made the poor
child believe that I had deserted her, and that I had not really married
her, but simply brought her abroad with me to be the plaything of my
season of travel, after which I was pledged to marry her, Margaret
Barton. She repeated this cunning tale to the landlord, and then, when
he drove my darling forth into the street, she hired the butler to follow
her, and thus give her departure the appearance of an elopement. It was
a plot fit to emanate only from the heart and brain of a fiend, and I
wormed it out of her little by little, after the departure of her tool,
who had traced her to this country, hoping to get more money for keeping
her secret.

"I cannot, neither do I wish to describe the scene that followed this
discovery. I was like a madman for a season, when I learned how I had
been duped, how my darling had been wronged and betrayed, and driven to
her untimely death, and I closed my heart and my doors forever against
Margaret Barton. I settled an annuity of twenty-five hundred dollars upon
her, then taking you, I left San Francisco. I came to settle in New York.

"You know all the rest, my Mona, but you cannot know how I have longed
to own you, my child, and dared not, fearing to alienate your love by
confessing the truth. I am going to conceal this avowal in the secret
drawer of the mirror, that I have given you to-day, and some time you
will read this story and perhaps pity and forgive your father for the
culpable cowardice and wrong-doing of his early life. That woman stole
the certificate of my first marriage and all the trinkets I had given
your mother; but I swear to you that Mona Forester was my lawful
wife--that you are our child, and in a few days I shall make my will,
so stating, and bequeath to you the bulk of my fortune. I will also in
that document explain the secret of this mirror so that you will have
no difficulty in finding this confession, your mother's rings, and some
letters which may be a c