oed aggrievedly. "Friends are all very well, of
course, but when you and I have just each other, aunty, I think it
is unkind of you to expect me to stay thousands of miles away from
you all by myself."

"But it was you who sent me to New York, and insisted on my staying
there!" she cried. Evidently she had been living over her wrongs.

"Yes--but how different!" I interrupted hastily. "There were the
cousins--of course I have to spare you sometimes to the rest of the
family!" Aunt Jane is strong on family feeling, and frequently
reproaches me with my lack of it.

But in expecting Aunt Jane to soften at this I reckoned without
Miss Higglesby-Browne. A dart from the cold gray eyes galvanized
my aunt into a sudden rigid erectness.

"My dear Virginia," she said with quavering severity, "let me
remind you that there are ties even dearer than those of
blood--soul-affinities, you know, and--and, in short, in my dear
friend Miss Higglesby-Browne I have met for the first time in my
life with a--a Sympathetic Intelligence that understands Me!"

So that was Violet's line! I surveyed the Sympathetic Intelligence
with a smiling interest.

"Really, how nice! And of course you feel quite sure that on your
side you thoroughly understand--Miss Higglesby-Browne?"

Miss Browne's hair was rather like a clothesbrush in her mildest
moods. In her rising wrath it seemed to quiver like a lion's mane.

"Miss Harding," she said, in the chest-tones she reserved for
critical moments, "has a nature impossible to deceive, because
itself incapable of deception. Miss Harding and I first met--on
this present plane--in an atmosphere unusually favorable to
soul-revelation. I knew at once that here was the appointed
comrade, while in Miss Harding there was the immediate recognition
of a complementary spiritual force."

"It's perfectly true, Virginia," exclaimed Aunt Jane, beginning to
cry. "You and Susan and everybody have always treated me as if I
were a child and didn't know what I wanted, when the fact is I
always have known _perfectly well_!" The last words issued in a
wail from the depths of her handkerchief.

"You mean, I suppose," I exploded, "that what you have always
wanted was to go off on this perfectly crazy chase after imaginary
treasure!" There, now I had gone and done it. Of course it was my
red hair.

"Jane," uttered Miss Higglesby-Browne in deep and awful tones, "do
you or do you not realize how strangely propheti