"Not very long; death robbed me of friends and home, and so I was obliged to earn my living," she returned, after considering a moment how she should answer.
"Then you are an orphan?"
"Yes."
"Have you no relatives?" and the lovely but keen blue eyes of the lady were fixed very searchingly upon the fair young face.
"None that I know of."
"You do not look as if you had ever done much work of any kind," Mrs. Montague observed. "You seem more like a person who has been reared in luxury; your hands are very fair and delicate; your dress is of very fine and expensive material, and—why, there is real Valenciennes lace on your pocket-handkerchief!"
Mona was becoming very nervous under this close inspection. She saw that Mrs. Montague was curious about her, though she did not for a moment imagine that she could have the slightest suspicion regarding her identity; yet she feared that she might be trapped into betraying something in an unguarded moment, if she continued this kind of examination.
"I always buy good material," she quietly remarked, "I think it is economy to do so, and—my handkerchief was given to me. How wide did you tell me to make the hems on these pillow-slips?" she asked, in conclusion, to change the subject, but mentally resolving that Mrs. Montague should never see any but plain handkerchiefs about her again.
"I did not tell you any width for the slips," was the dry, yet haughty rejoinder, for madame could not fail to understand that she had been politely admonished that her curiosity was becoming annoying to her fair seamstress, "but you may make them to match those upon the sheets—three inches."
She arose, immediately after giving this order, and swept proudly from the room, and Mona did not see her again that day. It seemed to the poor girl, with her unaccustomed work, the longest one she had ever known, and she grew heavy-hearted, and very weary before it was over.