Mona Part 34

If Mrs. Vanderheck had led a respectable life in New York for two years, and was as well known to this officer as he represented, he also began to fear that he might have made a mistake.

"You are willing to defer the arrest if she can furnish ample security for her appearance when wanted?" the policeman asked, after a moment of thought.

"Ye-es; but responsible parties must vouch for her," Mr. Rider answered, with some hesitation.

The woman seized the suggestion with avidity.

"Oh, then, I have a dozen friends who will serve me," she cried, eagerly.

"Come back to the ball-room with me and you shall have security to any amount." and with a haughty air she turned back and entered the brilliantly lighted building which she had recently left.

The policeman conducted them into a small reception-room, and Mrs.

Vanderheck sent her card, with a few lines penciled on it, to a well-known banker, who was among the guests in the ball-room, requesting a few moments' personal conversation with him.

The gentleman soon made his appearance, and was greatly astonished and no less indignant upon being informed of what had occurred.

But he readily understood that the matter in hand must be legally settled before the lady could be fully acquitted. He therefore unhesitatingly gave security for her to the amount required by the detective, but politely refused to receive, as a guarantee of her integrity, the costly ornaments which Mrs. Vanderheck offered him then and there for the service so kindly rendered.

She, then, without a murmur, delivered over to the detective, in the presence of her friend, the policeman, and her maid, the contested crescents and cross, and was then allowed to take her departure, with her attendants, without further ceremony.

Early the next morning the following message went flas.h.i.+ng over the Western wires to Chicago, addressed thus:

"To JUSTIN CUTLER, ESQ.:--Crescents found. Come at once to identify.

Bring bogus ones.

"RIDER."

The detective then sought Mr. Palmer, but upon being informed that he was out of town, and would not return until the early part of the coming week, he related to Ray what had happened on the previous evening, and advised him to communicate the fact as soon as possible, to his father, and notify him that an examination would take place at ten o'clock on the following Tuesday.

Ray had already telegraphed, in answer to his father's message, that he would come to Hazeldean on Monday for the ball, and at first he thought he would make no change in his plans. The news was good news, and would keep for a day or two, he told himself.

But the detective's enthusiasm over the arrest was so contagious, he found himself wis.h.i.+ng that his father could also know what had occurred.

He had an engagement for that evening--which was Sat.u.r.day--so he could not go to Hazeldean that day, and finally contented himself by commissioning Mr. Rider to drop Mr. Palmer a message, giving him a hint of the arrest, and then arranged to go himself to explain more fully, by the Sunday evening train.

It almost seemed as if fate had purposely arranged it thus, that he might find Mona alone as he did, to declare his love, and win in return the confession of her affection for him.

The moment his father entered the house and met him, on his return from the evening service at the village, he realized that some great change had come over him; he was very different from the depressed, anxious-eyed son whom he had left only a few days previous.

He could hardly attribute it entirely to the news of the arrest of the supposed thief of the diamonds, and yet he could think of nothing else, for he firmly believed that Walter Dinsmore's niece had left New York after her uncle's death, and he had no reason to believe that Ray had found trace of her.

But whatever had caused the change--whatever had served to bring back the old light to his eyes, the old smile to his lips, and all his former brightness and energy of manner, he was grateful for it, and he hailed the result with a delight that made itself manifest in the hearty grip of his hand and his eager-toned:

"How are you, Ray, my boy? I am glad to see you."

CHAPTER XXI.

MONA AND RAY HAVE ANOTHER INTERVIEW.

Mona was very happy as she went up to her room after her interview with Ray that eventful Sunday evening, during the early part of which life had seemed darker than usual to her.

The man whom she loved was true, in spite of the doubt and sorrow she had experienced over his apparent neglect. She had not after all built her hopes upon s.h.i.+fting sand; she had not reared an idol in her heart only to have to hurl it from its shrine as false and worthless. Oh, no; her lover was a man to be reverenced--to be proud of, and to be trusted under all circ.u.mstances.

She exulted in these facts almost as much as in the knowledge of his love for her, and she dropped to sleep with joy in her heart, smiles on her lips, and tears of grat.i.tude flas.h.i.+ng like diamonds on her long brown lashes.

The next morning she seemed almost like a new creature. The world had suddenly acquired a wonderful brightness and beauty, and it was a delight even to exist.

It was no hards.h.i.+p to be a seamstress or even a waiting-maid, so long as she was blessed with Raymond Palmer's love and with the prospect of becoming his wife in the near future.

Involuntarily a gay little song rippled from her lips while she was dressing, and the unusual sound catching Mrs. Montague's ear caused a look of surprise to sweep over her face, for she had never heard Ruth Richards sing so much as a note before.

"The girl has a sweet, flexible voice. I wonder if she is going to surprise me, every now and then, with some new accomplishment! Maybe I have an embryo _prima-donna_ in my employ!" she muttered, with a scornful smile.

Her surprise was not diminished when she saw the happy girl with her bright and animated manners and the new love-light s.h.i.+ning on her face, making it almost dazzling in its intensified loveliness.

"What has come over you, Ruth?" Mrs. Montague inquired, regarding her curiously. "One would almost imagine you were going to the ball yourself to-night, you appear to be so happy and elated."

"I believe there must be something unusually exhilarating in the atmosphere," Mona replied, a gleeful little laugh rippling over her smiling lips, although she blushed beneath the woman's searching look.

"Don't you think that excitement is sometimes infectious?--and surely everybody has been active and gay for days. I like to see people happy, and then the morning is perfectly lovely."

Truly the world was all _couleur de rose_ to her since love's elixir had given a new impetus to her heart-pulses!

Mrs. Montague frowned slightly, for somehow the girl's unusual mood annoyed her.

She could not forget her exceeding loveliness on Sat.u.r.day evening, when she had been arrayed in the festal robe which she herself was to wear at the ball, and the memory of it nettled her.

Perhaps, she thought, Ruth remembered it also, and was secretly exulting over the fact of her own beauty. Exceedingly vain herself, she was quick to suspect vanity in others, and this thought only increased her irritation.

"I'd give a great deal if she wasn't so pretty; and--and that style of beauty always annoys me," she said to herself, with a feeling of angry impatience.

And giving a sudden twitch to a delicate ruffle, which she had begun to arrange upon the corsage of a dress, to show Mona how she wanted it, she made a great rugged tear in the filmy fabric, thus completely ruining the frill.

This only served to increase her ill humor.

"There! now I cannot wear this dress at dinner to-day," she cried, flus.h.i.+ng angrily over the mishap, "for the frill is ruined."

"Haven't you something else that you can use in its place?" Mona quietly asked.

"No; nothing looks as well on this corsage as these wide, fleecy frills of _c.r.a.pe lisse_. It is the only dress, too, that I have not already worn here, and I was depending upon it for to-day," was the irritable response.

Mona thought she had plenty of laces and ruffles that would have answered very well, and which might easily have been subst.i.tuted, but she did not think it best to make any further suggestions to her in her present mood.

"I know what I can do," Mrs. Montague continued, after a moment, in a milder tone. "I saw some ruffling very nearly like this in a milliner's window at Rhinebeck, when I was out riding on Sat.u.r.day. There are some other little things that I shall want for this evening, and you may take a walk by and by to get them for me."

Rhinebeck was a full mile away, and Mrs. Montague could easily have arranged to have Mona ride, for a carriage was sent every morning for the mail; but it did not occur to her to do so, or if it did, she evidently did not care to put herself to that trouble.