“I am very sorry.  I was depending upon him to help amuse some of our fair young guests,” said his host.  Then he added, with considerable interest:  “Any new developments regarding that remarkable robbery?”

“No; and I do not imagine there ever will be,” Mr. Palmer gravely returned.

“Then you have given up all hope of ever recovering them?”

“Well, almost, though I have a detective on the lookout yet, and he thinks if he can get track of the thief in this case, she will prove to be the very woman that he has been searching for during the last three years.  He imagines that she is the same one who was concerned in a bold swindle in Chicago about that time.”

“Well, I sincerely hope that he will be successful in finding her; such wickedness should not be allowed to prosper,” said Mr. Wellington.  “I am really sorry about Ray, though—­he is such capital company, and there are six or eight wonderfully pretty girls here who will be deeply disappointed when they learn that he is not coming at all.”

The two gentlemen passed into the drawing-room just then, and Mona heard nothing more.

She deeply sighed, and continued to stand there for some moments lost in thought.

She could not really make up her mind whether she was more disappointed than rejoiced over Ray’s failure to meet this engagement.

It would have been very pleasant to see him again, but it would also have been very humiliating to have him find her there in the capacity of a servant, and ignore her on this account, as Louis Hamblin had done.  She still felt most keenly his apparent neglect of her during her troubles, and of course, being entirely ignorant of what had occurred, she attributed it to the most unworthy motives, which, however, did not help to reconcile her to the loss of his friendship.

She gathered from what Mr. Palmer had said about his not being quite strong yet that Ray had been ill, and she wondered, too, what he had meant by his being depressed on account of some other matter that was troubling him.

She had also learned something new about the robbery, of which she had only had a faint hint from the little item which she had read in the paper on the day she went to Mrs. Montague’s.  She gleaned now that Ray had in some way been responsible for the loss—­or, at least felt himself to be so to some extent.

She wished that she could have heard more about him, and she was conscious of a deeper sense of loneliness and friendliness, from this little rift in the cloud that had shut her out of the world where once she had been so happy.

Another sigh escaped her as she slowly turned to go on to her room and almost unconsciously she cried out, with a little sob of pain and longing: 

“Oh, Ray, Ray!”

“Aha!”

The ejaculation startled the young girl beyond measure.  She did not dream that there was any one near her.  She had been so absorbed in observing Mr. Palmer and listening to what had occurred in the lower hall, and in her own sad thoughts, that she was unconscious that any one had stolen up on her unawares, and had also been a witness to the interview between Mr. Palmer and Mr. Wellington, until this exclamation made her look up.  She found herself again face to face with Louis Hamblin.