er place with
Robert Lorillard and probably the name of his wife had been "taboo"
between them, for I couldn't fancy Robert talking of June with any
one--unless with some old friend who had known her well.

"Ah, that's it!" I exclaimed. "Now I do remember. June and I spoke of
you afterward, as we were going away. We said, 'What an interesting
girl!' Nearly five years ago! It seems a hundred."

Miss Arnold didn't speak, and again my thoughts flew back.

Opal Fawcett suddenly sprang into fame with the breaking out of the war,
when all the sweethearts and wives of England yearned to give "mascots"
to their loved men who fought, or to get news from beyond the veil, of
those who had "gone west." Opal had, however, been making her weird way
to success for several years before. She had a strange history--as
strange as her own personality.

A man named Fawcett edited a Spiritualistic paper, called the _Gleam_.
One foggy October night (it was All Hallow E'en) he heard a shrill,
wailing cry outside his old house in Westminster. (Naturally it was a
_haunted_ house, or he wouldn't have cared to live in it!) Someone had
left a tiny baby girl in a basket at his door, and with it a letter in a
woman's handwriting. This said that the child had been born in October,
so its name must be Opal.

Fawcett was a bachelor; but he imagined that spirit influences had
turned the unknown mother's thoughts to him. For this reason he kept the
baby, obligingly named it Opal, and brought it up in his own religious
beliefs.

Opal was extremely proud of her romantic debut in life, and when she had
decided upon a career for herself, she wrote her autobiography up to
date. As she was quite young at the time--not more than twenty-five--the
book was short. She had a certain number of copies bound in specially
dyed silk supposed to be of an opal tint, changeable from blue to
pinkish purple, and these she gave to her friends or sold to her
clients.

I say "clients," because, after being a celebrated "child medium" during
her foster father's life, and then failing on the stage as an actress,
she discovered that palmistry was her forte. At least it was one among
several others. You told her the date when you were born, and she "did"
your horoscope. She advised people also what colours they ought to wear
to "suit their aura," and what jewels were lucky or unlucky. Later, when
the war came, she took to crystal gazing. Perhaps she had begun it
before, but