"
"Indeed! then you have changed your mind since the night when you so
indignantly affirmed to Louis that you did not wish to profit by so much
as a dollar from the man who had so wronged your mother," sneered her
companion, bitterly.
"Certainly," calmly returned Mona, "now that I know the truth. My father
did my mother no willful wrong, although in his morbid grief and
sensitiveness he imputed such wrong to himself, and never ceased to
reproach himself for it. You alone," Mona continued, with stern
denunciation, "are guilty of the ruin of their happiness and lives; you
alone will have to answer for it. You have been a very wicked woman, Mrs.
Montague, not only in connection with your schemes regarding them, but
in your corruption of the morals of your nephew. I should suppose your
conscience would never cease to reproach you for having reared him to
such a life of crime. You will have to answer for that also."
Mrs. Montague shivered visibly at these words, thus betraying that she
was not altogether indifferent to her accountability.
But she quickly threw off the feeling, or the outward appearance of it,
and tossing her head defiantly, she remarked:
"I do not know who has made you my mentor, Miss Dinsmore; but there is
one thing more that I wish you to explain to me--how came that detective
to be in my house?"
"He was passing in the street, and I asked him to come in," Mona replied.
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