vour to me, she might set her accomplishments to work on this
business. Only she'd have to meet you both and see this house, for I've
heard her say she couldn't do anything without knowing the people
concerned, and 'getting the atmosphere.'"

"Oh, we _must_ have her!" cried Constance, and all the other women except
Annesley chimed in, begging their hostess to invite them if the Countess
came.

No one thought it odd that Mrs. Nelson Smith should be silent, for her
remark about the Countess de Santiago's beauty showed that she had met
the lady; but to any one who had turned a critical stare upon her then,
her expression must have seemed strange. She had an unseeing look, the
look of one who has become deaf and blind to everything outside some
scene conjured up by the brain.

What Annesley saw was a copy of the _Morning Post_. Knight's mention of
the Countess de Santiago's power of clairvoyance at the same time with
the liner _Monarchic_ printed before her eyes a paragraph which her
subconscious self had never forgotten.

For the moment only her body sat between a young hunting baronet and a
distinguished elderly general at her cousins' dinner table. Her soul had
gone back to London, to the ugly dining room at 22-A, Torrington Square,
and was reading aloud from a newspaper to a stout old woman in a tea
gown.

She was even able to recall what she had been thinking, as her lips
mechanically conveyed the news to Mrs. Ellsworth. She had been wondering
how much longer she could go on enduring the monotony, and what Mrs.
Ellsworth would do if her slave should stop reading, shriek, and throw
the _Morning Post_ in her face.

As she pictured to herself the old woman's amazement, followed by rage,
she had pronounced the words:

SENSATIONAL OCCURRENCE ON BOARD THE S.S. _MONARCHIC_

Even that exciting preface had not recalled her interest from her own
affairs. She could remember now the hollow, mechanical sound of her voice
in her own ears as she had half-heartedly gone on, tempted to turn the
picture of her wild revolt into reality.

The paragraph, seemingly forgotten but merely buried under other
memories, had told of the disappearance on board the _Monarchic_ of
certain pearls and diamonds which were being secretly brought from New
York to London by an agent of a great jewellery firm. He had been blamed
by the chief officer for not handing the valuables over to the purser.

The unfortunate man (who had not advertised