They had not proceeded far when they came to a place where another road appeared to branch off from the road they were on. "Let us turn here," Ray said. "I have been exploring while you were in the village, and I found that this is a kind of lane, hedged on either side with a thick growth of pines, and leads back to the main road farther on. It is a little roundabout, but we shall not be likely to meet any one whom we know, and we shall feel far more freedom." Mona was very glad to adopt this plan, and wandering slowly along beneath the shadows of the heavy pines, the lovers soon forgot that there was any one else in the world except themselves. They talked over more fully the incidents of the weeks of their separation, but Ray dwelt a good deal upon the story of the stolen diamonds, and Mona could not fail to observe that he was very much troubled about the affair. "It is a great loss," he remarked, with a sigh, "and though I cannot feel that I am culpably blamable, yet I do not cease to reproach myself for having been so thoroughly fooled by that woman. If I had only retained my hold upon the package, she never could have got it." "But you may recover the diamonds, even now," Mona remarked. "You say that the detective arrested a woman on Friday evening as the suspected party." "Yes, he suspects her in connection with another case, which he has been at work upon for over three years," and Ray related the story of the stolen crescents, then continued: "At the Delmonico ball he saw this Mrs. Vanderheck with them in her ears, and a cross like one that we lost, so he arrested her upon suspicion of both robberies, but somehow I am not very sanguine that we shall recover the stones." "Did you not see the cross?" Mona asked. "No; Mr. Rider had deposited it somewhere for safe keeping. It will be produced at the examination to-morrow. But, really, Mona," Ray interposed, with a nervous laugh, "I feel worse over the fact of having been so taken in by this pretended Mrs. Vanderbeck, than over the pecuniary loss." The poor fellow felt very much as Justin Cutler felt when he learned how he had been tricked into paying a large price for the pair of paste crescents. "How did the woman look, Ray? Describe her to me," Mona said. She experienced a strange fascination in the story with all its curious details. Ray gave a vivid word-picture of the beautiful woman, her dress, her carriage, and even her driver, for everything connected with that unexampled experience was indelibly stamped upon his mind. "You say her dress was badly torn," Mona musingly observed, when he had concluded the account of the discovery, and what had followed their getting out of the carriage and entering Doctor Wesselhoff's office.