tart immediately.

Mona was very glad to learn this, for she was sure that she should hear
from Ray and receive the piece of dress goods; her only fear was that
the Waltons might not remain at the hotel long enough for her to find an
opportunity to fit the piece into the rent, to ascertain if it belonged
there.

The earnestly desired letter reached her the next evening. Ray had been
very expeditious. Receiving Mona's dispatch just before the southward
mail closed, he had hastily inclosed the piece of cloth, with a few
words, in an envelope, and so there was no delay.

She was certain, as she examined it, that it was exactly the same color
as the dress she had seen the day before, and reasonably sure regarding
the texture; but the great question now to be answered was: Would it fit
the rent?

"Now I must find the dress, if possible, when the woman is wearing
something else," Mona mused, with a troubled face, and beginning to think
she had undertaken a matter too difficult to be carried out. "Perhaps
she has no other dress here; how, then, am I going to prove my suspicion
true, or otherwise?"

She knew that she could go to the authorities, tell her story, and have
the woman and dress forcibly examined; but she could not bear to do
anything that would make herself conspicuous, and it would be very
disagreeable to carry the affair so far and then find she had made a
lamentable mistake.

"If Ray were only here he would know what to do," she murmured, "but he
isn't, and I must do the best I can without him. I must find out where
the woman rooms. I must examine that dress!"

Fortune favored her in an unexpected way the very next morning.

The chambermaid who had charge of the floor on which their rooms were
located, came, as usual, to put them in order, but with a badly swollen
face, around which she had bound a handkerchief.

"Are you sick?" Mona asked, in a tone of sympathy, for the girl's heavy
eyes and languid manner appealed very strongly to her kind heart.

"I have a toothache, miss," the girl said, with a heavy sigh. "I never
slept a wink last night, it pained me so."

"I am very sorry, and of course you cannot feel much like work to-day, if
you had no sleep," Mona said, pityingly.

"Indeed I don't--I can hardly hold my head up; but the work's got to be
done all the same," was the weary reply.

"Cannot you get some one to substitute for you while you have your tooth
taken out and get a little rest?" Mona