than ever, with that wondering
expression in their liquid depths, while she turned that little box over
and over in her trembling hands, as if she tried to gather courage to
untie the string that bound its cover on and look within it.

At last she threw up her head with a determined air, gathered up all the
things she had found in the secret drawer, and rising, drew a chair to
her table, where she sat down to solve the mystery.

CHAPTER XIII.

"I SHOULD THINK WE WERE OUT AT SEA!"

Mona's curiosity prompted her to examine the contents of the little box
first.

She untied the narrow ribbon that was bound about it, lifted the cover
and a layer of cotton, and discovered the two rings which we already know
about.

"My mother's wedding and engagement-ring!" Mona breathed, seeming to know
by instinct what they were. "They must have been taken from her fingers
after she was dead, and Uncle Walter has kept them all these years for
me. Oh, why could he not have told me about them? I should have prized
them so." She lifted them from their snowy bed with reverent touch,
remarking, as she did so, the size and great beauty of the diamond in the
engagement-ring.

"My dear, deeply wronged mother! how I should have loved you!" she
murmured. "I wonder if you know how tenderly I feel toward you; if you
can see me now and realize that I, the little, helpless baby, for whose
life you gave up your own, am longing for you with all my heart and
soul."

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 nervo