sing-song accents.
Very practically she added: "I just now took the trouble to find out her
name."

"Can she tell the past?" quizzed Sara Emerson skeptically.

"She can. To Amarna the past is a freshly written page. From her occult
vision nothing lies hidden. Let me lead you to her." Elfreda crooked an
inviting arm.

With a joyful giggle Sara rose. Accepting the proffered guidance to the
seat of the all-wise Amarna, she proceeded to hustle her amiable
conductor over the grass toward the grotto at a most indecorous rate of
speed, born of her ardent determination to test the mettle of the
Seeress of the Seven Veils.

"Go ahead." Releasing Sara's arm, Elfreda gave her a gentle shove toward
the grotto and retired into a discreet patch of darkness to chuckle
unobserved.

"Stand where you are. I am Amarna," piped a thin, reedy voice. Sara
obediently came to a halt in the opening to the grotto and faced a
black-draped dais on which the illustrious prophetess reposed. In the
chastened yellow glow, cast by an enormous lantern hung directly over
where she now paused, Sara was plainly visible to the uncanny figure on
its perch. On the contrary, as Amarna sat well in the shadow, her face
still hidden behind her veil, she greatly resembled a huge black blot.
"You are not the only child in your father's house," continued the high
voice. "You have a sister who is your very counterpart. Both saw the
light on the same day, March the seventh."

The seeress went on with a detailed narration of various past events in
Sara's life which caused her eyes to grow round with wonder. The
subsequent prediction of a most remarkable future, in which fate had
apparently decreed that she should never marry but end her days as a
successful conductor of an art needle-work emporium, sent her scurrying
back to her friends divided between wonder of the mysterious being's
power to depict the past and disgust at the prospect of such a hum-drum
future.

"Do let me interview her next," pleaded Julia Emerson. "But first I
shall run up to my room and get my scarf. If Amarna can swathe her
distinguished features, so can I. Then she won't know I'm a twin. I must
say she seems better at reading the past than predicting the future. I
don't see how she could tell a single thing about you, Sara, when you
just stood still there. Fortune-tellers generally ask to look at one's
palm." Having delivered herself of this wise opinion, Julia flitted off
to the house