tanding beside me, and had laid her dead
hand upon me. I cannot look them over--I will tie them up again and burn
them all at once," she muttered, in a hoarse tone.

She gathered them up, and hastily wound the ribbon about them, laying
them upon the table beside her, then proceeded with her examination of
the other contents of the secret compartment.

CHAPTER V.

MONA DECLINES A PROPOSAL.

Mrs. Montague next took a square pasteboard box from the secret
compartment in the table, and opened it.

On a bed of pure white cotton there lay some exquisite jewelry. A pearl
and diamond cross, a pair of unusually large whole pearls for the ears,
and two narrow but costly bands for the wrists, set with the same
precious gems.

"Pearls!" sneered the woman, giving the box, with its contents, an angry
shake. "He used to call her his 'pearl,' and so, forsooth, he had to
represent his estimate of her in some tangible form. There is nothing
of the pearl-like nature about me," she continued, with a short, bitter
laugh. "I am more like the cold, glittering diamond, and give me pure
crystallized carbon every time in preference to any other gem. He wasn't
niggardly with her on that score, either," she concluded, lifting the
upper layer of cotton, and revealing several diamond ornaments beneath.

"She was a proud little thing, though," she mused, after gazing upon them
in silence for a moment, "to go off and leave all these trinkets behind
her. I'd have taken them with me and made the most of them. They haven't
done me much good, however, since they came into my possession. I never
could wear them without feeling as I did just now about the letters. I
might have sold them, I suppose, and I don't know why I haven't done so,
unless it is because they are all marked."

She covered them and threw the box from her with a passionate gesture,
and then searched for a moment in silence among the remaining contents of
the table.

She finally found what she wanted, apparently, for a look of triumph
swept over her face.

It was a folded document, evidently of parchment.

"Ha, ha! prove your shrewd inferences, my keen-witted lawyer, if you
can," she muttered, exultantly, as she unfolded it, and ran her eyes over
it. "Mona Forester's child the heir to the bulk of my husband's property,
indeed! Perhaps, but she will have to prove it before she can get it. How
fortunate that I helped myself to these precious keepsakes when he was
off hi