window. Mrs.
Rhinehart had planned that the waitress should room with the cook, but the
girl had insisted that she must have a room alone, no matter how small,
and they had compromised on this unused, ill-furnished spot.

As she took off the felt hat, she wondered what its owner would think if
he could see her now, and she brushed a fleck of dust gently from the
felt, as if in apology for its humble surroundings. Then she smoothed her
hair, put on the apron Mrs. Hart had given her, and descended to her new
duties as maid in a fashionable home.

[Illustration]

VII

Three days later Tryon Dunham entered the office of Judge Blackwell by
appointment. After the business was completed the Judge said with a smile,
"Well, our mystery is solved. The little girl is all safe. She telephoned
me just after you had left the other day, and sent her maid after her hat.
It seems that while she stood by the window, looking down into the street,
she saw an automobile containing some of her friends. It stopped at the
next building. Being desirous of speaking with a girl friend who was
seated in the auto, she hurried out to the elevator, hoping to catch them.
The elevator boy who took her down-stairs went off duty immediately, which
accounts for our not finding any trace of her, and he was kept at home by
illness the next morning. The young woman caught her friends, and they
insisted that she should get in and ride to the station with one of them
who was leaving the city at once. They loaned her a veil and a wrap, and
promised to bring her right back for her papers and other possessions, but
the train was late, and when they returned the building was closed. The
two men who called for her were her brother and a friend of his, it seems.
I must say they were not so attractive as she is. However, the mystery is
solved, and I got well laughed at by my wife for my fears."

But the young man was puzzling how this all could be if the hat belonged
to the girl he knew--to "Mary." When he left the Judge's office, he went
to his club, determined to have a little quiet for thinking it over.

Matters at home had not been going pleasantly. There had been an ominous
cloud over the breakfast table. The bill for the hat had arrived from
Madame Dollard's, and Cornelia had laid it impressively by his plate. Even
his mother had looked at him with a glance that spoke volumes as she
remarked that it would be necessary for her to have a new rain-coa