rateful
look, "but I found friends to help me. Come and let me introduce you
to them."

She led him to Mr. Cutler and his sister, who had quietly withdrawn to a
little distance--for, of course, they took in the situation at once--and
performed the ceremony, when, to her surprise, Mr. Cutler cordially
shook her lover by the hand, remarking, with his genial smile:

"Mr. Palmer and I have met before, but my sister has not had that
pleasure, I believe."

Ray greeted them both with his habitual courtesy, and then in a frank,
manly way, but with slightly heightened color, remarked:

"My appearance here perhaps needs some explanation, but it will be
sufficient for me to explain that Miss Montague is my promised wife."

"I surmised as much, not long after making the young lady's
acquaintance," Mr. Cutler remarked, with a roguish glance at Mona's pink
cheeks and downcast eyes. "But," he added, with some curiosity, "it is a
puzzle to me how you should know that she would arrive in New York on
this steamer to-day."

Ray explained the matter to him, and then they all left the vessel
together.

Mr. and Miss Cutler were to go to the Hoffman House, and invited Mona to
be their guest during their stay in the city, but thanking them for their
kindness, she said she thought it would be best for her to go directly
to Mr. Graves, as she had business which she wished him to attend to
immediately.

She also expressed again her gratitude to them for their exceeding
kindness to her, and promised to call upon them very soon, then bidding
them an affectionate good-by she left the wharf with her lover.

They went for a drive in Central Park before going to Mr. Graves, for Ray
was anxious to learn all the story of the plot against her and to talk
over their own plans for the future.

He found it very difficult to restrain his anger as she told him of her
interview with Louis Hamblin in New Orleans, and how she had been decoyed
upon the steamer for Havana, with the other circumstances of the voyage,
and her arrival there.

"The villain will need to be careful how he comes in my way after this,"
he said, with sternly compressed lips and a face that was white with
anger. "I will not spare him--I will not spare either of those two
plotters; but you shall never meet them again, my darling," he concluded,
with tender compassion in his tones, as he realized how much she must
have suffered with them.

"I shall have to go to West Forty-nint