her in her flight.

"Who were they, and where were they going?" Louis demanded, in great
excitement.

"Cutler was the name, and they had left early to take the steamer for New
York," they told him.

"What was her hour for sailing?" cried the young man.

"Nine-thirty," he was informed.

Louis looked at his watch.

It lacked fifteen minutes of the time.

"A carriage! a carriage!" he cried, as he dashed out of the hotel and
down the steps at a break-neck pace.

He sprang into the first vehicle he could find, made the driver
understand that he wanted him to hasten with all possible speed to the
New York steamer, and enforced his wishes by showing the man a piece of
glittering gold.

He was terribly excited; his face was deathly white, and his eyes had the
look of a baffled demon. But he was not destined to have the satisfaction
of even seeing Mona, for he reached the pier just in season to see the
noble steamer sailing with stately bearing slowly out into the harbor,
and he knew that the fair girl was beyond his reach.

Meantime, as soon as she had seen Louis and Mona safely on board the
steamer, bound for Havana, Mrs. Montague, instead of going into the
stateroom that had been engaged for her only as a blind, slipped
stealthily back upon deck, hastened off the boat, and into her carriage,
which had been ordered to wait for her, and was driven directly to the
railway station, where she took the express going northward.

She did not spare herself, but traveled day and night until she reached
New York, when she immediately sent a note to Mr. Palmer, notifying him
of her return and desire to see him.

He at once hastened to her, for she had intimated in her communication
that she was in trouble, and upon inquiring the cause of it, she informed
him, with many sighs and expressions of grief, that her nephew and
prospective heir had eloped with her seamstress.

Mr. Palmer looked amazed.

"With that pretty, modest girl, whom you had at Hazeldean with you?" he
exclaimed, incredulously.

"Yes, with that pretty, modest girl," sneered Mrs. Montague. "These sly,
quiet things are just the ones to entrap a young man like Louis, and
there is poor Kitty McKenzie who will break her heart over the affair."

The wily widow's acting was very good, and Mr. Palmer sympathized with
her, and used his best efforts to comfort her. But all that Mrs. Montague
had cared to do was to set the ball rolling so that Ray might get it, an