s older than she--died a couple of
years ago. Ran through everything and drank himself to death. Before
and since that happy event the Duchess did everything under the
heavens to get a bid to court. She gave millions to charity and to
entertainments. She sacrificed everything. But, no sir! It wouldn't
do. She had no royal blood. But with you it will be different. You're
a princess, royal Inca, and such like. You qualify right from the
jump. So you see what you're expected to do for the Altern crowd--

"Dear! dear!" catching her breath and switching quickly to another
theme, "have you heard about the Hairton scandal? It's simply rich!
You see, young Sidney Ames--"

Carmen's patience had touched its limit. "Don't, please don't!" she
begged, holding out a hand. "I do not wish to hear it!"

Mrs. Gannette raised her lorgnette and looked at the girl. "Why, my
dear! what's the matter? The scandal's about Ames's son, you know. The
reason he doesn't go in society. Just come to light. You see--"

"My dear Mrs. Gannette," Carmen looked up at her with a beseeching
smile. "You wouldn't deliberately give me poison to drink, would
you?"

"Why, certainly not!" blustered that garrulous lady in astonishment.

"Then why do you poison my mind with such conversation?"

"What!"

"You sit there pouring into my mentality thought after thought that is
deadly poisonous, don't you know it?"

"Why--!"

"You don't mean to harm me, I know," pleaded the girl. "But if you
only understood mental laws you would know that every thought entering
one's mind tends to become manifested in some way. Thoughts of
disease, disaster, death, scandal--all tend to become externalized in
discordant ways, either on the body, or in the environment. You don't
want any such things manifested to me, do you? But you might just as
well hand me poison to drink as to sit there and pour such deadly
conversation into me."

Mrs. Gannette slowly drew herself up with the hauteur of a grandee.
Carmen seized her hand. "I do not want to listen to these unreal
things which concern only the human mind," she said earnestly. "Nor
should you, if you are truly aristocratic, for aristocracy is of the
thought. I am not going to marry Reginald. A human title means nothing
to me. But one's thought--that alone is one's claim to _real_
aristocracy. I know I have offended you, but only because I refuse to
let you poison me. Now I will go."

She left the divan and the petrified dam