ed her position readily, and it was very interesting to me.

She was a young married lady, and had first been brought to the house,
six months before, by a cousin of hers who was staying with them in New
York, and thought the experience might be amusing.

"We just came in for a joke," she said; "but something happened which
interested me so much that I have come again several times, and until
to-day have always had an interesting time."

Then she told me about her first sitting.

I had noticed upon her ungloved hand a very beautiful _scarabaeus_, set
in fine gold, and evidently by an artist in the craft. "Yes, it is a
Tiffany setting," she observed, seeing my eyes drawn to it. She took off
the ring, and gave it into my hands.

"That ring is really the cause of my being here to-day," she continued.
"The scarabaeus was given to me some years ago by Professor----" (she
gave the name of a well-known American Egyptologist). "He made a great
pet of me when I was a child, and I begged it from him. When I was going
to be married last year he insisted upon having it set for me by Tiffany
as a wedding present, and he then told me there was no doubt at all
about its being a genuine _antique_. He had come across it many years
before by a curious chance when travelling in Egypt, and had been
assured that it was a genuine _Cleopatra_ relic. 'I can't answer for
that,' he said, laughing, 'but it is certainly many centuries old. I
have no doubt it is genuine so far as age goes.' Well, the night my
cousin and I came here together I did not take off my gloves until
_after_ we had gone in to the _seance_ room, so no one could have seen
my ring--and you know Mrs Gray's sittings always begin in the dark? I
took my gloves off when I found we had to sit in a circle holding hands,
and one of the first materialisations was announced to be that of
Cleopatra." (_I_ had seen "Cleopatra" more than once in 1886, in the
same house--E. K. B.) "She rushed across the room in the complete
darkness, seized my right hand, amongst all the hands in a circle of
twenty people or more, almost tore this special ring from my finger, and
said in a tone of indescribable grief and longing: '_Mine! Mine!_ Ah,
_Chem!_ CHEM!'"

This was sufficiently startling, even apart from the mention of _Chem_,
as the ancient name for Egypt, in a _milieu_ of this kind!

The ring was faithfully restored later in the evening; and the young
lady who owned it had been sufficientl