True Love's Reward by Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

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"But, oh, my child, the tidings that met me there were such as to drive
the strongest mind distracted. The landlord told me that my wife had fled
with the butler of the house. At first I laughed in his face at anything
so absurd, but when he flew into a towering passion and accused me of
having brought disgrace upon his house by living there unlawfully with
a woman who was not my wife, I began to think there must be some truth in
his statements. In vain I denied the charge; he would not listen to me,
and drove me also from his dwelling.

"I was too lame and helpless to attempt to follow Mona, but I set a
detective at work to find my wife, for I still had faith in her, and
thought she might be the victim of the landlord's suspicions. The
detective traced her to London, and brought me word that a couple
answering the description of my wife and the butler had crossed the
channel on a certain date, and had since been living under the same roof
in London.

"Then I cursed my wife, and said I would never trust a human being again.
I was a long time getting over my lameness, but I still kept my detective
on the watch, and one day he came to me with the intelligence that the
butler had deserted his victim, and the lady was ill, and almost
destitute.

"That Mona should want or suffer, under any circumstances, was the last
thing I could wish, even though I then firmly believed that she had
deserted me; while the thought that my child might even lack the
necessities of life, was sufficient incentive to make me hasten at once
to her relief. But I have told you, Mona, that she was dead, and I found
only a weak and helpless baby to need my care. The nurse told me that
the lady had wanted to go to America several weeks previously, but her
physician had forbidden her to attempt to cross the ocean. She told me
that a gentleman had taken the room for her and had been very kind to
her, but the lady had been very unhappy and ill most of the time, since
coming to the house. I questioned her closely, but evidently Mona had
made a confidante of no one, and she had lived very quietly, seldom going
out, and seeing no one. I could not reconcile this with the fact of her
having eloped with the butler, and I realized all too late that I should
have come to her the moment I learned where she was, demanded an
explanation, and at least given her a chance to defend herself. My
darling might have lived, if I had done so, and my child would not
have been motherless.

"I was frantic with grief, and tried to drown my sorrow by constant
change of scene. I traveled for two years, and then was summoned home to
my aunt, who was dying. She insisted that my marriage with Miss Barton
should be immediately consummated, and I, too wretched to contest the
point, let them have their way. Miss Dinsmore died soon afterward, but
without suspecting my previous marriage. Then I confessed the truth to my
wife, and told her of the existence of my child. I saw at once that she
was deeply wounded upon learning of this secret of my life, but I never
suspected how exceedingly jealous and bitter she was, or that she had any
previous knowledge of the fact, until a little more than a year after our
marriage, when I accidentally overheard a conversation between her and
the man who had been her accomplice in ruining your mother's happiness
and mine. That elopement, so called, had always seemed utterly
inexplicable to me until then.

"I learned that day that Margaret Barton had known of my marriage with
Mona Forester almost from the first, that she had followed us abroad, and
came disguised into the very house where we were living; that she had
intercepted my letter, telling Mona of my accident, and made the poor
child believe that I had deserted her, and that I had not really married
her, but simply brought her abroad with me to be the plaything of my
season of travel, after which I was pledged to marry her, Margaret
Barton. She repeated this cunning tale to the landlord, and then, when
he drove my darling forth into the street, she hired the butler to follow
her, and thus give her departure the appearance of an elopement. It was
a plot fit to emanate only from the heart and brain of a fiend, and I
wormed it out of her little by little, after the departure of her tool,
who had traced her to this country, hoping to get more money for keeping
her secret.

"I cannot, neither do I wish to describe the scene that followed this
discovery. I was like a madman for a season, when I learned how I had
been duped, how my darling had been wronged and betrayed, and driven to
her untimely death, and I closed my heart and my doors forever against
Margaret Barton. I settled an annuity of twenty-five hundred dollars upon
her, then taking you, I left San Francisco. I came to settle in New York.

"You know all the rest, my Mona, but you cannot know how I have longed
to own you, my child, and dared not, fearing to alienate your love by
confessing the truth. I am going to conceal this avowal in the secret
drawer of the mirror, that I have given you to-day, and some time you
will read this story and perhaps pity and forgive your father for the
culpable cowardice and wrong-doing of his early life. That woman stole
the certificate of my first marriage and all the trinkets I had given
your mother; but I swear to you that Mona Forester was my lawful
wife--that you are our child, and in a few days I shall make my will,
so stating, and bequeath to you the bulk of my fortune. I will also in
that document explain the secret of this mirror so that you will have
no difficulty in finding this confession, your mother's rings, and some
letters which may be a comfort to you.

"Now, my darling, this is all; but I hope you will not love me less when
you learn your mother's sad story and my weakness and sin in not boldly
acknowledging her as my wife before the world. Oh, if I could hear but
once, your dear lips call me 'father' I could ask no greater comfort in
life--it would be the sweetest music I have ever heard since I lost my
other Mona; yet it cannot be. But that God may bless you, and give you
a happy life, is the earnest prayer of your loving father,

"WALTER RICHMOND MONTAGUE DINSMORE."

Ray was deeply moved as he finished reading this sad tale.

"It is the saddest story I ever heard," he said, as he folded the closely
written sheets and returned them to Mona, "and Mr. Dinsmore must have
suffered very keenly since the discovery of the great wrong done his
wife, for his whole confession betrays how sensitive and remorseful he
was."

"My poor father! if he had only told me! I could not have loved him less,
and it would have been such a comfort to have known of this relationship,
and to have talked with him about my mother," said Mona, with tears in
her beautiful eyes.

"Well, dear, we will begin our life with no concealments," said Ray, with
a tender smile, "And now, when may I tell Mr. Graves that you will come
to me?"

"When you will, Ray," Mona answered, flushing, but with a look of love
and trust that made his heart leap with gladness.

"Then one month from to-day, dear," he said, as he bent his lips to hers.

And so, when the roses began to bloom and all the world was in its
brightest dress, there was a quiet wedding one morning in Mr. Graves'
spacious drawing-room and Mona Dinsmore gave herself to the man she
loved.

There were only a few tried and true friends present to witness the
ceremony, but everybody was happy, and all agreed that the bride was
very lovely in her simple but elegant traveling dress.

"I cannot have a large wedding or any parade with gay people about me,
for my heart is still too sore over the loss of my dear father," Mona had
said, with quivering lips, when they had asked her wishes regarding the
wedding, and so everything had been done very simply.

It is doubtful if so young a bride was ever made the recipient of so many
diamonds as fell to Mona's lot that day.

Mr. Palmer, true to his promise, had all the recovered stones reset for
her, and made her a handsome gift besides. Mr. and Miss Cutler presented
to her a pair of beautiful stars for the hair, and Ray put a blazing
solitaire above her wedding-ring, for a guard.

After a sumptuous wedding-breakfast, the happy couple started for a trip
to the Golden Gate city, while during their absence, Mr. Palmer, senior,
had his residence partially remodeled and refurnished for the fair
daughter to whom already his heart had gone out in tender affection.

A notice of the marriage appeared in the papers, together with a
statement that "the handsome fortune left by the late Walter Dinsmore had
been restored to the young lady formerly known as Miss Mona Montague,
now Mrs. Raymond Palmer, who had been fraudulently deprived of it,
through the craftiness of a woman calling herself Mrs. Dinsmore."

Mona did not wish anything of her father's sad story to be made public,
and so, it was arranged that this was all that should be given to the
reporters, to show that she was Mr. Dinsmore's heiress, and would resume
her former position in the world upon her return from her bridal trip.

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