ual came to regard her as some kind of dangerous animal in
a state of temporary and perfidious repose. And this impression
deepened every instant, so much so, that when the small soft hand
was laid in his, he almost expected to see the sharp claws
unsheathe themselves from the velvet finger-tips and fasten in
his flesh.

The language she used, when freed from the technical phrases of
her trade, was good enough for every day, and she did not
distinguish herself by any specialty of bad English.

She asked her customer, with her most insinuating smile, if he
would have her "run the cards for him," and on receiving an
affirmative answer she took the pack of playing cards into her
velvet hands, pawed them dexterously over a few times to shuffle
them, laid them in three rows with the faces upward, and softly
purred the following words:

"I am uncertain whether to run you a club or a diamond, for I do
not exactly see how it is; but I will run you a club first, and
if you find that it does not tell your past history, please to
mention the fact to me, and I will then run you a diamond."

She then proceeded to mention a number of fictitious events which
she asserted had happened in the past life of her listener, but
that individual, who did not find that her revelations agreed
with his own knowledge of his former history, tremblingly
informed her of that fact; and she then, with a most vicious
contraction of the overhanging eyebrows, broke short the thread
of her fanciful story, and proceeded to "run him a diamond."

She evidently was determined to make the diamond come nearer the
truth--to which end she dexterously strove by a series of very
sharp cross-questionings to elicit some circumstance of his early
history, on which she might enlarge, or to get some clue to his
present circumstances, and hopes, and aspirations, that she might
find some peg on which to hang a prediction with an appearance of
probability. The Individual--with humiliation he confesses it--was
a bachelor. His heart had proved unsusceptible, and Cupid had hitherto
failed to hit him. On this occasion he proved characteristically
unimpressible; and the insinuating smile, the inquiring look, and
the winning manner, all failed of effect, and he remained
pertinaciously non-committal.

Finding this to be the case, the feline Madame changed her
tactics, and, as if to spite her intractable customer, began to
prophesy innumerable ills and evils for him. She a