RAY'S EXPERIENCE.

While Mona was plodding her monotonous way among sheets and pillow-slips,
table linen and dressmaking, in Mrs. Montague's elegant home, Raymond
Palmer was also being subjected to severe discipline, although of a
different character.

We left him locked within a padded chamber in the house of Doctor
Wesselhoff, who was a noted specialist in the treatment of diseases
of the brain and nerves.

It will be remembered that Ray had been hypnotized into a profound
slumber, from which he did not awake for many hours.

When at last he did arouse, he was both calmed and refreshed, while he
was surprised to find that a small table, on which a tempting lunch was
arranged, had been drawn close beside the lounge where he lay.

He was really hungry, and arose and began to partake with relish of the
various viands before him, while, at the same time, he looked about the
artfully constructed chamber he was in with no small degree of curiosity.

He remembered perfectly all that had occurred from the time he left his
father's store in company with the charming Mrs. Vanderbeck until he had
been so strangely over-powered with sleep by the influence of those
masterful eyes, which had peered at him through an aperture in the wall.

As his mind went back over the strange incidents of the day he began to
experience anew great anxiety over the loss of the rare stones which had
been so cleverly stolen from him, and also regarding the fate in store
for him.

He knew that the diamonds were in his pocket when the carriage stopped
before the house, for he had not removed his hand from the package until
Mrs. Vanderbeck discovered that her dress had been caught in the door of
the carriage.

That very circumstance, he felt sure, was a part of the skillfully
executed plot, and he was convinced that the woman must have robbed him
during the moment when he had bent forward and tried to extricate it
for her; while she must have concealed the package somewhere in the
_coupe_ while she was apparently trying to pin together the rent in her
dress.

Then, as soon as he alighted, how adroitly she had filled his arms with
her bundles and kept his attention so engaged that he did not think of
the diamonds again, until the gentleman of the house appeared in the room
where Mrs. Vanderbeck had left him.

Oh, how negligent he had been! He should not have released his hold
upon that package under any circumstances, he told himself; and y