h temptation and sufficient opportunity) might yet
break out.

"Gently, Mr. Le Frank! The tea is hot--you may burn your mouth. How am
I to tell you what has happened?" Miss Minerva dropped the playfully
provocative tone, with infinite tact, exactly at the right moment. "Just
imagine," she resumed, "a scene on the stage, occurring in private life.
The lady who fainted at your concert, turns out to be no less a person
that Mrs. Gallilee's niece!"

The general folly which reads a prospectus and blindly speculates in
shares, is matched by the equally diffused stupidity, which is incapable
of discovering that there can be any possible relation between fiction
and truth. Say it's in a novel--and you are a fool if you believe it.
Say it's in a newspaper--and you are a fool if you doubt it. Mr. Le
Frank, following the general example, followed it on this occasion a
little too unreservedly. He avowed his doubts of the circumstance just
related, although it was, on the authority of a lady, a circumstance
occurring in real life! Far from being offended, Miss Minerva cordially
sympathized with him.

"It _is_ too theatrical to be believed," she admitted; "but this
fainting young person is positively the interesting stranger we have
been expecting from Italy. You know Mrs. Gallilee. Hers was the first
smelling-bottle produced; hers was the presence of mind which suggested
a horizontal position. 'Help the heart,' she said; 'don't impede it.'
The whole theory of fainting fits, in six words! In another moment,"
proceeded the governess making a theatrical point without suspecting
it--"in another moment, Mrs. Gallilee herself stood in need of the
smelling-bottle."

Mr. Le Frank was not a true believer, even yet. "You don't mean _she_
fainted!" he said.

Miss Minerva held up the indicative forefinger, with which she
emphasized instruction when her pupils required rousing. "Mrs.
Gallilee's strength of mind--as I was about to say, if you had listened
to me--resisted the shock. What the effort must have cost her you will
presently understand. Our interesting young lady was accompanied by a
hideous old foreign woman who completely lost her head. She smacked
her hands distractedly; she called on the saints (without producing the
slightest effect)--but she mixed up a name, remarkable even in Italy,
with the rest of the delirium; and _that_ was serious. Put yourself in
Mrs. Gallilee's place--"

"I couldn't do it," said Mr. Le Frank, with