il of the
caricaturist. The Doctor, who had no idle time, was about to make his
escape, when a general movement took place in the crowd, and he found
himself borne along irresistibly with the rest through a large door, which
it seemed had just opened, into a spacious hall or amphitheatre. At the
upper end was a stage; on the stage a large, strangely-fashioned wheel was
placed; and by the side of the wheel stood a little child, dressed in a
sky-blue tunic, with a red girdle round its waist, its hair curled and
lying upon its shoulders, and a bandage across its eyes. The wheel and the
child formed together a sort of mythological representation of Fortune.
They were drawing the lottery.

After amusing himself for some time with the novelty of the spectacle, the
Doctor began to make serious efforts to extricate himself. As he was
threading his way through the crowd, and looking this way and that to
detect the easiest mode of egress, he saw, underneath a small gallery at
the side of the amphitheatre, in a place which seemed to be reserved for
the more favoured or more constant worshippers in that temple of Fortune,
a face, the last he should have expected to find there. It was no other
than the Countess. She was seated there with all the gravity in the world,
inclining with a courteous attention to an old man with gray hairs and
smooth brown coat, who was very deferentially addressing her.

Having disengaged himself from the throng, and returned to his own house,
this appearance of the Countess recurred very forcibly to his mind. "After
all," thought he, "it _was_ the Countess!--it was none but she who sent
those notes." The enigma was solved. He had made his fortune in the
lottery, and without knowing it. He determined to visit his old patient
the next morning.

That very evening, however, he was waited on by the same old gentleman in
brown coat and gray hairs, who was seen speaking to her at the lottery. He
came with a rueful face, requesting him to visit immediately Madame ----,
giving the Countess her right name, which it is now too late in our story
to introduce. Whatever may have been the case at some previous time, the
wheel of Fortune had that day bitterly disappointed her hopes. She had
been carried home insensible. The Doctor hastened to her. It was too late.
She had been again attacked by a congestion of the brain, which this time
had proved fatal.

There appeared no hopes of a complete solution of the enigma.