Mona quietly asked.

"If I had stopped to think I might have known that you would not," the woman said, sullenly. "But how did you get out of that hotel in Havana?"

"Mr. Justin Cutler a.s.sisted me."

Mrs. Montague flushed hotly at the mention of that name.

"Yes, I know, but how?" she said.

Mona briefly explained the manner of her escape, then inquired, in a voice of grave reproach:

"How could you conspire against me in such a way? How could you aid your nephew in so foul a wrong?"

"I have already told you--to make our fortunes secure," was the cool retort.

Mona shuddered. It seemed such a heartless thing to do, to plan the ruin of a homeless, unprotected girl for the sake of money.

Mrs. Montague noticed it, and smiled bitterly.

"You surely did not suppose I bore you any love, did you?" she sneered.

"I have told you how I hated your mother, and it is but natural that the feeling should manifest itself against her child, especially as you both had usurped the affections of my husband."

"Such a spirit is utterly beyond my comprehension," gravely said the girl, "when your only possible reason for such hatred of a beautiful girl was that my father loved and married her."

"Well, and wasn't that enough?" hotly exclaimed Mrs. Montague. "For years Walter Dinsmore's aunt had intended that he should marry me--that was the condition upon which he was to have her fortune--and I had been reared with that expectation. Therefore, it was no light grief when I learned by accident, three weeks after he sailed for Europe, that he had married a girl who had come to New York to earn her living as a milliner. They went abroad together and registered as Mr. and Mrs. Richmond Montague. I was wild, frantic, desperate, when I discovered it; but I kept the matter to myself. I did not wish Miss Dinsmore to learn the fact, for I had a plan in my mind which I hoped might yet serve to give me the position I so coveted. I persuaded Miss Dinsmore that it would be wise to let me follow Walter to Europe, and I promised her that if such a thing were possible, I would return as his wife. Six weeks after he sailed with his bride, I also left for Europe with some friends. I kept track of the unsuspicious couple for four months, but it was not until they settled in Paris for the winter that I had an opportunity to put any of my plans into action."

"If you please, Mrs. Montague, I would rather you would not tell me any more," Mona here interrupted, with a shiver of repulsion. "My father wrote out the whole story, and so I know all about it. You accomplished your purpose and wrecked the life of a pure and beautiful woman--a loved and loving wife; but truly I believe if my mother could speak to-day she would say that she would far rather have suffered the wrong and wretchedness to which she was subjected than to have exchanged places with you."

"Do you dare to twit me of my present extremity and misery?" cried Mrs.

Montague, angrily.

"Not at all; I was not thinking of these later wrongs of which you have been guilty," Mona gently returned, "but only of the ruin which you wrought in the lives of my father and mother. I cannot think that you were happy even after you had succeeded in your wretched plots."

"Happy!" repeated the woman, with great bitterness. "For two years I was the most miserable creature on earth. I will tell it, and you shall listen; you shall hear my side of the story," she went on, fiercely, as she noticed that Mona was restless under the recital. "As I said before, when they settled in Paris for the winter I began to develop my plans. I went to a skillful costumer, and provided myself with a complete disguise, then hired a room in the same house, although I took care to keep out of the sight of Walter Dinsmore and his wife. One day he went out of the city on a hunting excursion, and met with an accident--he fell and sprained his ankle, and lay in the forest for hours in great pain. He was finally found by some peasants who bore him to their cottage, and kindly cared for him. His first thought was, of course, for his wife, and he sent a messenger with a letter to her telling of his injury. I saw the man when he rode to the door. I instinctively knew there was ill news. I said I knew Mrs. Montague, and I would deliver the letter. I opened and read it, and saw that my opportunity had come. Walter Dinsmore, with many sickening protestations of love, wrote of his accident, and said it would be some time before he should be able to return to Paris, but he wished that she would take a comfortable carriage the next day, and come to him if she felt able to do so. Of course I never delivered the letter, but the next day I went to Mona Forester, and told her that her lover had deserted her; that she was no wife, for their marriage had been but a farce; that he had not even given her his real name; that he was already weary of her, and she would never see him again, for he was pledged to marry me as soon as he should return to America.

"At first she would not believe one word of it--she had the utmost confidence in the man she idolized; but as the days went by and he did not return she began to fear there was some foundation for my statements.

Then a few cunning suggestions to the landlord and his wife poisoned their minds against her. They accused her of having been living in their house in an unlawful manner, and drove her out of it with anger and scorn.

"She left on the fifth day after Walter's accident, and I hired the butler of the house to go with her and make it appear as if she had eloped with him. He carried out my instructions so faithfully that their sudden flitting had every appearance of the flight of a pair of lovers.

When Walter received no answer from his wife, and she did not go to him, as he requested, he became very anxious, and insisted upon returning to Paris, in spite of his injury. Immediately upon his arrival he was told that his lady had eloped with the butler of the house, and the angry landlord compelled him to quit the place also.

"I did not set eyes on him again for more than two years, when he returned at Miss Dinsmore's earnest request, for she had not long to live. He did not seem like the same man, and apparently had no interest in life. When Miss Dinsmore on her death-bed begged him to let her see the consummation of her one desire he listlessly consented, and we were married in her presence, and she died in less than a month. Then he confessed his former marriage to me, and told me that he had a child; that her home must be with us, and to escape all scandal and remark we would go to the far West. I was furious over this revelation, but I concealed the fact from him, for I loved him with all my soul, and I would have adopted a dozen children if by so doing I could have won his heart. I consented to have you in the family, provided that you should be reared as his niece, and never be told of your parentage. He replied, with exceeding bitterness, that he was not anxious that his child should grow up to hate her father for his lack of faith in her mother, and his deep injustice to her.

"We went to San Francisco to live, but I hated you even more bitterly than I had hated your mother, and every caress which I saw my husband lavish upon you was like a poisoned dagger in my heart. But he never knew it--he never knew that I had had anything to do with the tragedy of his life, until more than a year after our marriage.

"My own child--a little girl--was born about ten months after that event; but she did not live, and this only served to make me more bitter against you; for, although my husband professed to feel great sorrow that she could not have lived to be a comfort to us and a companion to you, I knew that he would never have loved her with the peculiar tenderness which he always manifested toward you.

"When your mother fled from him and Paris she left everything that he had lavished upon her save what clothing she needed and money to defray necessary expenses during the next few months; and so after my marriage I found pocketed away among some old clothing belonging to my husband the keepsakes that he had given to her and also their marriage certificate.

I took possession of them, for I resolved that if you should outlive your father you should never have anything to prove that you were his child; if I could not have my husband's heart I would at least have his money.

"One day a little over a year after our marriage, on my return from a drive, I was told that a man was waiting in the library to see me.

Without a suspicion of coming evil, I went at once to ascertain his errand, and was horrified to find there the butler--the man whom I had hired to act as your mother's escort to London. He had been hunting for me for three years to extort more money from me, and had finally traced me from New York to San Francisco.

"He demanded another large sum from me. It was in vain that I told him I had paid him generously for the service he had rendered me. He insisted that I must come to his terms or he would reveal everything to my husband. Of course I yielded to that threat, and paid him the sum he demanded, but I might have saved the money, for Walter Dinsmore, who had that morning started for Oakland for the day, but changed his mind and returned while I was out, was sitting in a small alcove leading out of the library, and had heard the whole conversation.

"Of course there was a terrible scene, and he obliged me to confess everything, although he had heard enough to enable him to comprehend the whole, and then he sternly repudiated me; but, scorning the scandal which would attend proceedings for a divorce, he gave me a meager stipend for separate maintenance, and told me he never wished to look upon my face again. He settled his business, sold his property, and returned to New York with you and your nurse, leaving me to my fate. He forbade me to live under the name of Dinsmore, but I would not resume my maiden name, and so adopted that of Mrs. Richmond Montague. But I still treasured that certificate and my own also, for I meant, if I should outlive him, to claim his fortune, and also kept myself pretty well posted regarding his movements.

"Shortly after our separation my only sister died, and her son, Louis, was thus left dest.i.tute, and an orphan. I believed that I could make him useful to me, so I adopted him. We have roved a great deal, for we have had to eke out my limited income by the use of our wits. My best game, though, was with the crescents which Miss Dinsmore gave me as a wedding present, and which I had duplicated several times. Early last fall we came to New York, for in spite of all the past I still loved Walter Dinsmore, and longed to be near him.

"I felt as if the fates had favored me when I heard that he had died without making his will, and I knew from the fact that you were known only as his niece, Miss Mona Montague, that you must still be in ignorance of your real relationship toward him. So it was comparatively easy for me to establish my claim to his property. I did not appear personally in the matter, for I was leading quite a brilliant career here as Mrs. Richmond Montague, and I did not wish to figure as the discarded wife of Walter Dinsmore, so no one save Mr. Corbin even suspected my ident.i.ty. If Walter Dinsmore had never written that miserable confession, or if I had at once turned all his property into money and gone abroad, or to California, I need never have been brought to this. As matters stand now, however, I suppose you will claim everything," she concluded, with a sullen frown.

Mona thought that if the law had its course with her she would 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sing 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 to have the fragment sent to me."

"And Ray Palmer had it and had kept it all that time!" interposed Mrs.

Montague, with a frown. "I hunted everywhere for it."

"He sent it to me by the next mail, and I began my hunt for the dress, although at that time I did not suspect that it belonged to you," Mona continued. Then she explained how, while a.s.sisting the chambermaid about her work, she had found the garment hanging in a wardrobe, and proved by fitting the fragment to the rent that her suspicions were correct.