ext building. Being desirous of speaking with a girl friend who was
seated in the auto, she hurried out to the elevator, hoping to catch them.
The elevator boy who took her down-stairs went off duty immediately, which
accounts for our not finding any trace of her, and he was kept at home by
illness the next morning. The young woman caught her friends, and they
insisted that she should get in and ride to the station with one of them
who was leaving the city at once. They loaned her a veil and a wrap, and
promised to bring her right back for her papers and other possessions, but
the train was late, and when they returned the building was closed. The
two men who called for her were her brother and a friend of his, it seems.
I must say they were not so attractive as she is. However, the mystery is
solved, and I got well laughed at by my wife for my fears."

But the young man was puzzling how this all could be if the hat belonged
to the girl he knew--to "Mary." When he left the Judge's office, he went
to his club, determined to have a little quiet for thinking it over.

Matters at home had not been going pleasantly. There had been an ominous
cloud over the breakfast table. The bill for the hat had arrived from
Madame Dollard's, and Cornelia had laid it impressively by his plate. Even
his mother had looked at him with a glance that spoke volumes as she
remarked that it would be necessary for her to have a new rain-coat before
another storm came.

There had been a distinct coolness between Tryon Dunham and his mother
and sister ever since the morning when the loss of the hat and rain-coat
was announced. Or did it date from the evening of that day when both
mother and sister had noticed the beautiful ring which he wore? They had
exclaimed over the flash of the diamond, and its peculiar pureness and
brilliancy, and Cornelia had been quite disagreeable when he refused to
take it off for her to examine. He had replied to his mother's question by
saying that the ring belonged to a friend of his