ption of identity that was for the moment overwhelming.

But those who show surprise or emotion quickest are not slowest to
recover from its effects. Whatever he felt, nothing more was to be shown
the two ladies. Reaching for a glass of ice-water standing upon the
table, Leslie drank the whole of it off at a draught, and the electric
shock at once restored the tone to his system and brought back the red
blood to his face. With a laugh he said:

"I really beg ten thousand pardons for alarming you, but these slight
attacks are constitutional, and they need not cause the least fear. That
is over, and I am as well as ever. What was it you were saying, Miss
Harris?"

"Thank heaven that you _are_ better!" said the kind-hearted girl. "I was
really for the instant apprehensive that something I had said might have
awakened some painful recollection. I was trying to get you, at that
moment, to understand the terrible significance of this advertisement."

"Well," said Leslie, laughing, "what am I to understand? That you have
been testing the skill of this seeress, or that you are about to do so?"

"There you go!" said Joe Harris. "Now you are on the _other_ side of the
fence! Excuse my similes, but I have not always been cooped up in this
humdrum city--I occasionally pay visits to the country. A moment ago you
grew pale at the name of the mighty Madame Boutell, whose cognomen
sounds a good deal like the Yankee 'doo tell!' I admit; and now you are
laughing at her!" The young girl had by this time recovered from her
good-natured anxiety and regained her habitual vivacity, and she rattled
on to the great edification of her auditors, and happily without
attracting any additional notice from the people at the other tables.
"Yes, sir, Miss Crawford and myself are about to consult this modest
exponent of the mysteries of the stars, though about what we have not
the least idea. _I_ have not, at least; have _you_, Bell?"

"Not the ghost of an idea," was the answer of Miss Crawford.

"Ghost is good, in that connection," rattled on the gay girl. "You see
I have never yet consulted a fortune-teller, and I am afraid I shall
soon be too old to do it to advantage. I lost my faith in Santa Claus, a
good many years ago, and long before my stocking was too big to hang up;
and I cried over the discovery for a fortnight. Suppose I should lose my
faith in fortune-telling before I ever had any experience in that
direction--wouldn't it be dreadful