onth or two, and knows
no one outside the university circle, but I assure you that the things
she has told us suffice in themselves to establish clairvoyance upon an
absolutely scientific basis. There is nothing like her, amateur or
professional. Come and be introduced!"

I like none of these mystery-mongers, but the amateur least of all.
With the paid performer you may pounce upon him and expose him the
instant that you have seen through his trick. He is there to deceive
you, and you are there to find him out. But what are you to do with
the friend of your host's wife? Are you to turn on a light suddenly
and expose her slapping a surreptitious banjo? Or are you to hurl
cochineal over her evening frock when she steals round with her
phosphorus bottle and her supernatural platitude? There would be a
scene, and you would be looked upon as a brute. So you have your
choice of being that or a dupe. I was in no very good humor as I
followed Wilson to the lady.

Any one less like my idea of a West Indian could not be imagined. She
was a small, frail creature, well over forty, I should say, with a
pale, peaky face, and hair of a very light shade of chestnut. Her
presence was insignificant and her manner retiring. In any group of
ten women she would have been the last whom one would have picked out.
Her eyes were perhaps her most remarkable, and also, I am compelled to
say, her least pleasant, feature. They were gray in color,--gray with
a shade of green,--and their expression struck me as being decidedly
furtive. I wonder if furtive is the word, or should I have said
fierce? On second thoughts, feline would have expressed it better. A
crutch leaning against the wall told me what was painfully evident when
she rose: that one of her legs was crippled.

So I was introduced to Miss Penclosa, and it did not escape me that as
my name was mentioned she glanced across at Agatha. Wilson had
evidently been talking. And presently, no doubt, thought I, she will
inform me by occult means that I am engaged to a young lady with
wheat-ears in her hair. I wondered how much more Wilson had been
telling her about me.

"Professor Gilroy is a terrible sceptic," said he; "I hope, Miss
Penclosa, that you will be able to convert him."

She looked keenly up at me.

"Professor Gilroy is quite right to be sceptical if he has not seen any
thing convincing," said she. "I should have thought," she added, "that
you would yourself