.

"So at St. Louis we resolved to become Spiritualists."

"The very best thing you could have done!" said Mrs. Winslow
approvingly.

"And at Quincy," resumed Evalena, "we blossomed out. Oh, but didn't the
papers go for us, though!--called us everything."

"D----n the newspapers, anyhow!" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow in a burst of
indignation over her own wrongs.

"Oh, no, no, no! _that_ won't do. Make huge advertising bills. That's
better--much better. That's what _we_ did, and we made big money too. By
and by we came on here to New York, made a huge show, took in a vast
pile, and then went to Europe. Oh, that's the only way to do it!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Winslow with a deep sigh. "I have often felt the want
of that peculiar tone which going to Europe gives one."

"Well, we did have a gay time, though," said Miss Gray in a dreamy way,
as if ruminating over her conquests; "and at Venice--oh, that delicious,
ravishing, dreamful Venice!--I bilked a swarthy nobleman from the
mountains out of five thousand dollars. At Rome I did a swell American
out of everything he had. At Vienna, a Hungarian wine-grower fell, and I
trampled upon him as his brutes of peasants beat out the grapes in
vintage-time. At Berlin a German student killed himself for me; and at
St. Petersburg I fooled the Czar himself. But when I got back to London
I got better game than him."

"Bigger game than the Czar? Oh, my!" exclaimed Mrs. Winslow, thinking
how she had wasted her sweetness on two detectives like Bristol and Fox.

"Well, bigger game this way," pursued little Miss Gray, reasoning it out
slowly. "This Spiritualistic business can only be played on low,
ignorant people ordinarily. Get the recognition of so big a man as one
of the wealthiest brewers in Great Britain, and then, if Miss Gray has
money and can open sumptuous parlors in so fashionable a vicinity as
Madison Square, and can own a quarter of a column of the New York papers
every day, Miss Evalena Gray's fortune is made. Do you see?"

Mrs. Winslow did see, but wanted to know how she had secured such
approval.

Her companion looked at her a moment in blank astonishment; then drawing
down the corners of her mouth as if protesting against such verdancy on
the part of so old a Spiritualistic soldier as Mrs. Winslow, gave a very
expressive series of winks, broke into loud laughter, and then suggested
that if she wanted anything like _that_ explained it would be no more
than fair to order ei