"I beg your pardon; I had no intention of wounding you thus," said the young man, regretfully, and flushing. "I simply wished you to understand that I had discovered your identity; and since you have now virtually acknowledged it, by asserting that Mona Forester was your mother, I beg you will be reasonable, and talk the matter over calmly with me, and hear what I have to propose to you."
Mona sank weakly back.
She saw that it would be worse than useless to deny what he had asserted; she had indeed betrayed and acknowledged too much for that.
"Very well. I will listen to what you wish to say, but be kind enough to be brief, for I have no desire to prolong this interview beyond what is absolutely necessary for your purpose," she said, with freezing dignity.
"Well, then," Louis Hamblin began, "I have known who you were ever since you came into Aunt Margie's house as a seamstress."
Then he went on to explain how he learned it, and Mona, remembering the incident but too well, saw that it would be best to quietly accept the fact of his knowledge.
"Does Mrs. Montague also know?" she asked, with breathless eagerness.
"She suspected you at first," he evasively answered, "but you so diplomatically replied to her questions—you were so self-possessed under all circumstances, and especially so when one day you found a picture of your mother, that she was forced to believe your strange resemblance to Mona Forester only a coincidence."