"Yes, and I have been keeping it for you until you should reach your eighteenth birthday. It is yours now, my Mona, but you must never part with it—it is to be an heir-loom. And if you should ever be married, if you should have children, you are to give it to your eldest daughter. And, oh! my child," the agitated man continued, as he arose and laid his hands upon her shoulders and looked wistfully into her beautiful face, "I hope, I pray, that your life may be a happy one."
"Why, Uncle Walter, how solemn you have grown all at once!" cried the young girl, looking up at him with a smile half startled, half gay, "One would think you were giving me some sacred charge that is to affect all my future life, instead of this lovely mirror that has such a charming and romantic history. I wish," she went on, thoughtfully, "you would tell me just how you came to have it. Did it descend to you from your father's or your mother's ancestors?"
The man sat down again before he replied, and turned his face slightly away from her gaze as he said:
"It really belonged to your mother, dear, instead of to me, for it has always been given to the eldest daughter on the mother's side; so, after your mother died, I treasured it to give to you when you should be old enough to appreciate it."
"I wish you would tell me more about my mother, Uncle Walter," the young girl said, wistfully, after a moment of silence. "You have never seemed willing to talk about her—you have always evaded and put me off when I asked you anything, until I have grown to feel as if there were some mystery connected with her. But surely I am old enough now, and have a right to know her history. Was she your only sister, and how did it happen that she died all alone in London? Where was my father? and why was she left so poor when you had so much? Really, Uncle Walter, I think I ought to insist upon being told all there is to know about my parents and myself. You have often said you would tell me some time; why not now?"
"Yes, yes, child, you are old enough, if that were all," the man returned, with livid lips, a shudder shaking his strong frame from head to foot.
Mona also grew very pale as she observed him, and a look of apprehension swept over her face at his ominous words.
"Was there anything wrong about mamma?" she began, tremulously.
"No, no!" Mr. Dinsmore interposed, almost passionately; "she was the purest and loveliest woman in the world, and her fate was the saddest in the world."
"And my father?" breathed the girl, trembling visibly.