I spoke, and withal why
modern literature generally has been so distressful to me. When you
reflect that the world is satisfied that most of man's criminal instincts
are the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shift
the responsibility for posterity to other shoulders than our own, you will
understand my position. We were about the most domestic old couple that
ever lived, and when we see the long and varied assortment of crimes that
are cropping out everywhere in our descendants it is painful to us to
realize what a pair of unconsciously wicked old fogies we must have been."

"We all understand that," said Cleopatra, kindly; "and we are all prepared
to acquit you of any responsibility for the advanced condition of
wickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear grandma,
and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no more
attributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oyster
cocktail is attributable to your lord and master."

"Thank you kindly," murmured the old lady, and she resumed her knitting
upon a phantom tam-o'-shanter, which she was making as a Christmas
surprise for her husband.

"When Captain Kidd began his story," said Cassandra, "he made one very bad
mistake, and yet one which was prompted by that courtesy which all men
instinctively adopt when addressing women. When he entered the room he
removed his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to convince
me of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could see the
workings of his mind. While you ladies were watching his lips or his eyes,
some of you taking in the gorgeous details of his dress, all of you
hanging upon his every word, I kept my eye fixed firmly upon his
imagination, and I saw, what you did not, _that he was drawing wholly upon
that_!"

"How extraordinary!" cried Elizabeth.

"Yes--and fortunate," said Cassandra. "Had I not done so, a week hence we
should, every one of us, have been lost in the surging wickedness of the
city of Paris."

"But, Cassandra," said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to the
beautiful city by the Seine, "he told us we were going to Paris."

[Illustration: "'HE TOLD US WE WERE GOING TO PARIS'"]

"Of course he did," said Madame Recamier, "and in so many words. Certainly
he was not drawing upon his imagination there."

"And one might be lost in a very much worse place," put in Marguerite de
Valois, "if, indeed, it were pos