isn't more. The first man explains. He makes gestures. So does the other.
They are quarrelling. The man who brought the bag is afraid of the older
one. He apologizes. He seems to be talking about something that he will
do. He goes to a mantelpiece in the room and points to a calendar. He
touches a date with his forefinger."

"What date?" Lady Annesley-Seton cried out. It was forbidden to speak to
the seeress in the midst of a vision, but Constance forgot in the strain
of her excitement.

The Countess gave a gasp, fell back in her chair, and put her hands over
her eyes. "Oh!" she stammered, as though she awoke from sleep. "How my
head aches! It is all gone!"

"I'm so sorry!" Constance apologized. "It began to seem so real, I
thought I was in that room with you. You are unaccountable! You couldn't
know what happened. Yet you have been seeing the thief who stole our
silver last night, and the Nelson Smiths' jewellery, but no jewellery of
ours. That is the strange part of the affair, for I have a few things I
adore--and they would have been easy to find. You didn't even know we
_had_ been robbed, did you?"

"No, of course not," said the Countess. "I am sorry! Was it in the
papers?"

"It will be this evening and to-morrow morning! But the police must hear
about this vision of yours, the vision of the man with the latchkey. It
may help them."

"You must not tell the police!" Madalena said, "I have warned you all,
that if you talked too much about me and my crystal, the police might
hear and take notice. There are such stupid laws in England. I may be
doing something against them. If you or Lord Annesley-Seton speak of me
to the police I will go away, and you will never hear more of my
visions--as you call them--in future. Unless you promise that you will
let the police find the thieves in their own way, without dragging me in,
I shall be so unnerved that my eyes will be darkened."

"Oh, I promise, if you feel so strongly about it," said Constance. "I
didn't realize that it might do you harm to be mentioned to the police."

She wished very much to have Madalena go on looking in the crystal. She
had been excited, carried out of herself for a few minutes, but she had
not heard what she had come to hear--why she had been spared the loss of
her personal treasures.

The desired promise hurriedly made, the Countess gave her attention once
more to the crystal. For a time she could see nothing. The mysterious
current had be