eave by another way, a way which
leads into the garden, and so into the street."

She unlocked the door, and he followed her into a large book-lined
study--masculine in its sober colouring and simple furnishings. Above
the mantelpiece was arranged a trophy of swords and fencing-sticks;
opposite hung a superb painting by Henner. Vanderlyn remembered having
seen this picture exhibited in the Salon some five years before. It had
been shown under the title "The Crystal-Gazer," and it was even now an
admirable portrait of his hostess, for so, unconsciously, had Vanderlyn
begun to regard the woman who was so little like what he had expected to
find her.

Madame d'Elphis beckoned to him to follow her into yet another, and a
much smaller, room. Ah! This was evidently the place where she pursued
her strange calling; for here--so Vanderlyn, trying to combat the eerie
impression she produced on him, sardonically told himself--were the
stage properties of her singular craft.

The high walls were hung with red cloth, against which gleamed
innumerable plaster casts of hands. The only furniture consisted of a
round, polished table, which took up a good deal of the space in the
room; on the table stood an old-fashioned lamp, and in the middle of the
circle of light cast by the lamp on its shining surface, a round crystal
ball. Two chairs were drawn up to the table.

An extraordinary sensation of awe--of vague disquiet--crept over
Laurence Vanderlyn; he suddenly remembered the tragic story of Jeanne de
Lera. Was it here that the sinister interview with the doomed girl had
taken place?

It was Madame d'Elphis who broke the long silence:--

"I must ask you, Monsieur," she said, stiffly, "to depose the fee on the
table. It is the custom."

Vanderlyn's thin nervous hand shot up to his mouth to hide a smile; the
eerie feeling which had so curiously possessed him dropped away, leaving
him slightly ashamed.

"Poor woman," he said to himself, "she cannot even divine that I am an
honest man!"

He bent his head gravely, and took the roll of notes with which he had
come provided out of his pocket. He placed a thousand-franc note on the
table. "What a fool she must think me!" he mentally exclaimed; then came
the consoling reflection, "But she won't think me a fool for long."

Madame d'Elphis scarcely glanced at the thousand-franc note; she left it
lying where Vanderlyn had put it. "Will you please sit down, Monsieur?"
she said.

Vand