sco together.

Every day since Theo Dene had told her of Angela May's existence she had
"cut the cards," and had invariably come upon a "fair woman" close to the
King of Hearts. Madame Vestris also had seen the "fair woman" in the
crystal, and had described her. "She is beautiful and young, and stands in
the sunshine," said the seeress, in whose visions Carmen had implicit
faith; "but suddenly she is blotted out of my sight, as if by a dark
cloud that swallows her up."

"Does she come back into the crystal?" Carmen had asked, eagerly.

"No. I can see you now. But she doesn't come back."

"And Nick? Do you find him?"

Madame Vestris knew very well who "Nick" was.

During the last three or four years she had replied to a great many
questions about Nick Hilliard, and her answers had brought her a goodly
number of ten-dollar bills. For crystal-gazing her charge was ten dollars:
with a trance in addition, twenty-five.

"I see a man standing beside you. But he is in deep shadow. I can't make
out who it is."

Carmen revived. "It must be Nick. There's no other man I can think of I
would let come near me."

When she called to Hilliard in the Mariposa Grove, and his answering call
told her where to look, Carmen was even more anxious to see what Mrs. May
was like than to meet Nick himself, though it seemed years since the night
when she bade him good-bye, full of hope, believing he would come back to
her.

The two were standing under the Grizzly Giant when she came up to them,
Nick a few steps in advance, because he had started to meet his old
friend, and a sickly pang shot through Carmen's heart as she saw Angela,
tall and white in the rose-and-silver twilight. She had to admit the
enemy's beauty; and with a sharp stab of pain she remembered Nick's
description of "the angel of his dreams." Yes, this white, slender
creature was like a man's idea of an angel. Here was Nick's ideal made
human. Carmen wished that the Grizzly Giant might fall on the angel and
crush her to death, a lingering death of agony; because nothing less could
satisfy a woman's longing for revenge. Nor was death enough to atone
Carmen would have chosen to see Angela die disfigured, so that Nick should
remember her hideous through the years to come. Desiring this eagerly, and
all other evils, Mrs. Gaylor was, nevertheless, polite and pleasant to
Mrs. May. She came out from the tragic shadow which had enveloped her like
a mourning mantle, and wondered