"Did you know my uncle?" Mona questioned, with some surprise.
"Not personally; but Mrs. Montague knew him very well years ago."
"Oh! I wonder if you could tell me—" Mona began, greatly agitated, as she recalled the dreadful suspicion that had flashed into her mind regarding her uncle, in connection with her father's death.
"If I could tell you what?" Louis inquired, while he wondered what thought could have so suddenly blanched her face, and sent that look of terror into her beautiful eyes.
"Oh, I want to know—did he—how did my father die?" the young girl cried, in faltering, trembling tones.
Louis Hamblin regarded her with unfeigned astonishment at the question.
"How did your father die?" he repeated. "Why, like any other respectable gentleman—in his own house, and of an incurable disease."
"Oh! then he did die a natural death," breathed Mona, with a sigh of relief that was almost a sob.
"Certainly. Ah!" and her companion appeared suddenly to divine her thoughts, "so you imagined that Walter Dinsmore killed Richmond Montague for the wrong done your mother! Ha! ha! I have no doubt that he felt bitter enough to commit murder, or almost any other act of violence, to avenge her; but let me assure you, Miss Montague, that that high-toned gentleman never soiled his hands with blood; and if that was your thought—"
"It is no matter what I thought," Mona hastily, but coldly, interposed, for she had no intention of confessing any such suspicion; but she was greatly relieved to learn that it had no foundation, and she now bitterly reproached herself for having even momentarily entertained a thought of anything that had been so foreign to her uncle's noble nature.