case before, I believe the very obscurity which invests it only adds
interest to it."

Mrs. Montague was in a terrible passion after her lawyer had left. She
sprang to her feet and paced the floor from end to end, with angry steps,
her face almost convulsed with malice and hatred.

"Can it be possible that I am going to have that battle to fight over
again, after all these years?" she muttered; "that the child is going to
rise up to avenge the wrongs of her mother? What if she does? Why need I
fear her? I have held my own so far, and I will make a tough fight to do
so in the future. Possession is said to be nine points in law and I shall
hold on to my money like grim death. I never could--I never will give up
these luxuries," she cried, sweeping a covetous glance around the
exquisitely furnished room. "I plotted for them--I sold my soul for them
and him, now they are mine--mine, and no one shall take them from me!
Mona Forester, how I hated you!--how I hate your daughter, even though
I have never seen her!--how I almost hate that girl up stairs for her
strange resemblance to you. I would have sent her out of the house long
ago for it, if she had not been so good and faithful a seamstress, and
needful to me in many ways. She, herself, saw the resemblance to that
picture--By the way," she interposed, with a start, "I wonder if she
obeyed me about that crayon the other day! If she didn't--if she kept it
I shall be tempted to believe--I'll find out, anyhow."

With a somewhat anxious look on her face, the woman hurried up stairs to
her room.

Upon reaching it she rang an imperative peal upon her bell.