“And you have succeeded.  Uncle Walter, I have never known a sorrow, you have been my best and dearest friend, and I love you—­I love you with all my heart,” the fair girl cried, as she threw her arm about his neck and pressed her quivering lips to his corrugated brow.

Mr. Dinsmore folded her close to his breast, and held her there in a silent embrace for a moment.

But Mona’s mind was intent upon hearing the remainder of his story; and, gently disengaging herself, she continued: 

“But tell me—­there is much more that I want to know.  What was the reason—­why did my father—­”

She was suddenly cut short in her inquiries by the opening of a door and the entrance of a servant.

“There is a caller for you in the drawing-room, Miss Mona,” the girl remarked, as she extended to her the silver salver, on which there lay a dainty bit of pasteboard.

Mona took it and read the name engraved upon it.

“It is Susie Leades,” she said, a slight look of annoyance sweeping over her face, “and I suppose I must go; but you will tell me the rest some other time, Uncle Walter?  I shall never be content until I know all there is to know about my father and mother.”

“Yes—­yes; some other time I will tell you more,” Mr. Dinsmore said, but with a sigh of relief, as if he were glad of this interruption in the midst of a disagreeable subject.

“I will leave the mirror here until I come back,” Mona said, as she laid it again in its box in the drawer; then, softly kissing her companion on the lips, she went slowly and reluctantly from the room.

The moment the door had closed after her, Walter Dinsmore, the proud millionaire and one of New York’s most respected and prominent citizens, dropped his head upon the desk before him and groaned aloud: 

“How can I ever tell her?” he cried.  “Oh, Mona, Mona!  I have tried to do right by your little girl—­I have tried to make her life bright and happy; must I cloud it now by revealing the wrong and sorrow of yours? Must I tell her?”

A sob burst from him, and then for some time he lay perfectly still, as if absorbed in deep thought.

At length he lifted his head, and, with a resolute look on his fine face, drew some paper before him and began to write rapidly.

At the expiration of half an hour he folded what he had written, put it in an envelope, and carefully sealed it, then turning it over, wrote “For Mona” on the back.

This done he took up the mirror which he had but just given the young girl, pressed hard upon one of the pearl and gold points with which the frame was thickly studded, and the bottom dropped down like a tiny drawer, revealing within it a package composed of half a dozen letters and a small pasteboard box.

The man was deadly pale, and his hands trembled as he took these out and began to look over the letters.

But, as if the task were too great for him, he almost immediately replaced them in their envelopes, and restored them to the drawer in the mirror.  Then he uncovered the little box, and two small rings were exposed to view—­one a heavy gold band, the other set with a whole pearl of unusual size and purity.