ou 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.

"I did not tell you any width for the slips," was the dry, yet haughty
rejoinder, for madame could not fail to understand that she had been
politely admonished that her curiosity was becoming annoying to her fair
seamstress, "but you may make them to match those upon the sheets--three
inches."

She arose, immediately after giving this order, and swept proudly from
the room, and Mona did not see her again that day. It seemed to the poor
girl, with her unaccustomed work, the longest one she had ever known, and
she grew heavy-hearted, and very weary before it was over.

She had all her life been in the habit of taking plenty of exercise in
the open air. While she was studying, Mr. Dinsmore had made her walk to
and from school, then after lunch they would either go for a drive or for
a canter in the park or the suburbs of the city.

She had never been subjected to any irksome restraint, and so it seemed
very hard to be obliged to sit still for so many hours at a time and do
nothing but "stitch! stitch! stitch!" like the woman in the "Song of the
Shirt."

But six o'clock came at last, to release her from those endless seams and
hems, and after she had eaten her dinner she was so completely wearied
out that she crept up to her bed and almost immediat