“Yes, I feared I might make some mistake, so left them,” Mona answered, but without stopping her work.

“How beautiful your seams look!” the lady said, as she examined some of the slips.  “Your stitches are very fine and even; but over-and-over sewing must be very monotonous work.  You might vary it by hemming a sheet now and then.  I want the hems three inches wide on both ends.”

“Do you have them stitched or done by hand?” Mona inquired.

“Oh, stitched; I have a beautifully running machine, and I want to get them out of the way as soon as possible, for there is dressmaking to be done.  Can you run a White machine?”

Mona was conscious that her companion was regarding her very earnestly during this conversation, but she appeared not to notice it, and replied: 

“I never have, but if I could be shown how to thread it, I think I should have no difficulty.”

She was very thankful to know that all that mountain before her was not to be done by hand.

“Do you like to sew?” Mrs. Montague inquired, as she watched the girl’s pretty hand in its deft manipulation of the needle.

Mona smiled sadly.

“I used to think I did,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation, “but when one is obliged to do one thing continually it becomes monotonous and irksome.”

“How long have you been obliged to support yourself by sewing?” the woman asked, curiously, for to her there seemed to be something very incongruous in this beautiful high-bred girl drudging all day long as a seamstress.

Mona flushed at the question.

There was nothing she dreaded so much as being questioned regarding her past life.

“Not very long; death robbed me of friends and home, and so I was obliged to earn my living,” she returned, after considering a moment how she should answer.

“Then you are an orphan?”

“Yes.”

“Have you no relatives?” and the lovely but keen blue eyes of the lady were fixed very searchingly upon the fair young face.

“None that I know of.”

“You do not look as if you had ever done much work of any kind,” Mrs. Montague observed.  “You seem more like a person who has been reared in luxury; your hands are very fair and delicate; your dress is of very fine and expensive material, and—­why, there is real Valenciennes lace on your pocket-handkerchief!”

Mona was becoming very nervous under this close inspection.  She saw that Mrs. Montague was curious about her, though she did not for a moment imagine that she could have the slightest suspicion regarding her identity; yet she feared that she might be trapped into betraying something in an unguarded moment, if she continued this kind of examination.

“I always buy good material,” she quietly remarked, “I think it is economy to do so, and—­my handkerchief was given to me.  How wide did you tell me to make the hems on these pillow-slips?” she asked, in conclusion, to change the subject, but mentally resolving that Mrs. Montague should never see any but plain handkerchiefs about her again.