the
woman and the man who had robbed her of her happiness. Especially did
her heart rise against Christian Van Pelt. Gold had won him from her: he
had made his choice between gold and her love; and then she would chafe
against the poverty which from her earliest recollection had fettered
her tastes and aspirations, and at every step had been her humiliation.
And then she would feel a wild, unreasoning longing to win gold. What a
triumph to earn gold beyond what his wife had brought him--beyond what
they would together possess! From the time this thought first occurred
to her it never left her except for brief intervals. Day after day, hour
after hour, it recurred to her, until she became possessed with it. It
was in her dreams by night, and with the day she seized and revolved it,
until her brain whirled with delirium. A hundred wild schemes and
projects came and went in scurrying confusion. With hungry eyes she read
the daily advertisements of "Business Chances," "Partners Wanted," etc.,
and in answering some of these was led into some strange discoveries and
adventures.

"I am mad! I am losing my reason! More gold than their millions! I
cannot even make a living for myself, lunatic!" she would say; and
straightway in fancy would read in the papers the announcement of a
fortune being left to Mary Trigillgus--of great and marvelous riches
coming to her--and would thrill with her triumph over Christian Van
Pelt. She would even pen these announcements to see how they looked, and
read them aloud to study their sound.

Mrs. Trigillgus grew alarmed at her daughter's unaccountable moods. A
physician was summoned, who decided that she was overworked, and advised
a few months in the country. But Mary refused to leave the city, and
continued to search for her "chance."

One day she was reading the New York _Tribune_, when her eye caught a
little paragraph in relation to the eclipse of the sun which was to
occur on the twentieth of August, and of the preparations that were
being made in the scientific world for its observance--of the universal
interest it was exciting, etc. etc.

Mary thought of the amount of smoked glass which would be prepared for
the day, then of the soiled fingers, then of a remedy for this, and
then--her chance flashed upon her.

For a time she sat there, with kindled eyes, with throbbing heart and
brain, revolving and shaping her thought. Then she put on her hat and
took the omnibus for Mr. Ten Eyck'