e these changes in her costume.

Upon reaching her own door, she quietly let herself in with her
latch-key, and going directly to her chamber, tore off her widow's
weeds, and wig, and threw them hastily upon the bed. She hurriedly
donned another dress, and was about to remove the cleverly simulated
signs of age from her face, when she heard the bell ring, and went into
the hall to ascertain who had called. We know the rest, how she
recognized the lawyer, and imagined he had come again to annoy her
further upon the subject of Mona Forester's child; how, almost at the
same moment, she discovered Mona's presence in the house, and instantly
resolved to lock her up until she could decide what further to do with
her. And thus, laboring under so much excitement, she entirely forgot
about the wrinkles and crow's-feet upon her face, and which so changed
its expression.

The moment Mona saw the costume upon the bed everything was made plain to
her mind. Mrs. Bently, of the Chicago and Boston crescent swindle, was no
other than Mrs. Montague in a most ingenious disguise.

Glancing about the room for further evidences of the woman's cunning, she
espied a trunk standing open at the foot of the bed, as if some one had
been hastily examining the contents and forgotten to shut it afterward.

She approached it, and on top of the tray there lay the very dress of
gray ladies' cloth which she had seen hanging in the closet of a certain
room in the Southern Hotel in St. Louis. Then she knew, beyond a doubt,
that Mrs. Montague had also figured as Mrs. Walton, the mother of the
miner, in that city.

But who was the miner?

Louis Hamblin, in all probability, although she had not dreamed of such
a thing until that moment.

"It is very strange that I should not have recognized Mrs. Montague,
in spite of the white hair and the spotted lace vail," she murmured,
thoughtfully. But after reflecting and recalling the fact that even the
woman's eyebrows had been whitened and the whole expression of the face
changed by pencil lines, to simulate wrinkles and furrows, and then
covered with a thickly spotted vail, she did not wonder so much.

She was amazed and appalled by these discoveries, and trembling with
excitement, she resolved to learn more, if possible.

She lifted the lid of the hat-box, at one end of the tray, and there lay
the very bonnet and vail that the woman had worn in St. Louis, and also
the wig of white hair.

"What a wretche