She touched the rings tenderly with her lips, tears raining over her cheeks, while sob after sob broke from her.

She wiped away her tears after a little, and tried the rings upon her own fingers, smiling sadly to see how perfectly they fitted.

“Mamma’s hand must have been about the size of mine,” she said.  “I think I must be very like her in every way.”

She slipped the heavy gold band off and bent nearer the light to examine the inside, hoping to find some inscription upon it.

She found only the date, “June 6th, 1861.”

“The date of her marriage,” she whispered, a little smile of triumph lighting her face, then removing the other ring from her hand, she laid them both back in the box and put it one side, “Now for the letters,” she said, taking up the one addressed to herself and carefully cutting one end across the envelope with a little knife taken from her pocket.

She unfolded the closely written sheets, which she drew from it, with hands that trembled with nervous excitement.

The next moment she was absorbed in their contents, and as she read a strange change came over her.

At first there was a quick start, accompanied by a low exclamation of surprise, then a look of wonder shot into her great brown eyes.  Suddenly, as she hungrily devoured the pages, her color fled, even her lips became white, and an expression of keen pain settled about her mouth, but she read on and on with breathless interest, turning page after page, until she came to the last one, where she found her uncle’s name signed in full.

“Now I know!” burst from her trembling lips, as the sheets fell from her nerveless hands and her voice sounded hollow and unnatural.  “How very, very strange!  Oh!  Uncle Walter, why didn’t you tell me? why didn’t you—­tell me?”

Her lips only formed those last words as her head fell back against her chair, all the light fading out of her eyes, and then she slipped away into unconsciousness.  When she came to herself again she was cold, and stiff, and deathly sick.

At first she could not seem to remember what had happened, for her mind was weak and confused.  Then gradually all that had occurred came back to her.

She shivered and tried feebly to rub something of natural warmth into her chilled hands, then suddenly losing all self-control, she bowed her face upon them, and burst into a passion of tears.

“Oh, if I had only known before,” she murmured over and over again, with unspeakable regret.

But she was worn out, and this excitement could not last.

She made an effort to regain her composure, gathered up the scattered sheets of her uncle’s letter, restoring them to the envelope, and then took up the other package which was bound with a scarlet ribbon.

There were half a dozen or more letters and all superscribed in a bold, handsome hand.

“They are my father’s letters to my mother,” Mona murmured, “but I have no strength to read them to-night.”