cause he could not find her.

CHAPTER XIX.

MONA IS JOYFULLY SURPRISED.

"Then you do love me, Mona?" Ray whispered, fondly, after a moment or two
of happy silence. "I must hear you say it even though you have tacitly
confessed it and my heart exults in the knowledge. I cannot be quite
satisfied until I have the blessed confirmation from your own lips."

"You certainly can have no reason to doubt it after such a betrayal as
this," Mona tried to say playfully, to shield her embarrassment, as she
lifted her flushed face from its resting-place, and shot a glad, bright
look into his eyes. Then she added in a grave though scarcely audible
voice: "Yes I _do_ love you with all my heart!"

The young man smiled; then with his arm still infolding her he led her
beneath the chandelier and turned on a full blaze of light.

"I must read the glad story in your eyes," he said, tenderly, as he bent
to look into them. "I must see it shining in your face. Ah, love, how
beautiful you are still! And yet there is a sad droop to these lips"--and
he touched them softly with his own--"that pains me; there is a heaviness
about these eyes which tells of trial and sorrow. My darling, you have
needed comfort and sympathy, while I was bound hand and foot, and could
not come to you. What did you think of me, dear? But you knew, of
course."

"I knew--I hoped there was some good reason," faltered Mona, with
downcast eyes.

"You 'hoped!' Then you _did_ think--you _feared_ that I, like other
false friends, had turned the cold shoulder on you in your trouble?" he
returned, a sorrowful reproach in his tone. "Surely you have known about
the stolen diamonds?"

"Yes, I knew that your father had been robbed."

"And about my having been kidnapped also--the papers were full of the
story."

Mona looked up, astonished.

"Kidnapped!" she exclaimed. "No; this is the first that I have heard of
that."

"Where have you been that you have not seen the papers?" Ray inquired,
wonderingly.

"As you doubtless know," Mona replied, "Uncle Walter died very suddenly
the day after I attended the opera with you, and for a fortnight
afterward I was so overcome with grief and--other troubles, that I
scarcely looked at a paper. After that, one day, I saw a brief item
referring to the robbery, and it is only since I came here that I had
even a hint that you had been ill."

"Come, then, dear, and let me tell you about it, and then I am sure you
will absol