ion of
his managing editor, Mr. Naylor, that a certain feature which had been
shaping up in his head would possess a peculiar interest if it could be
"led" with a few remarks by Mrs. Athelstone. Though her husband, the
Rev. Alfred W.R. Athelstone, was a Church of England clergyman, whose
interest in Egyptology had led him to accept the presidency of the
American branch of the Royal Society, she was a leader among the
Theosophists. And now that the old head of the cult was dead, it was
rumored that Mrs. Athelstone had announced the reincarnation of Madame
Blavatsky in her own person. This in itself was a good "story," but it
was not until a second rumor reached Naylor's ears that his newspaper
soul was stirred to its yellowest depths. For there was in Boston an
association known as the American Society for the Investigation of
Ancient Beliefs, which was a rival of the Royal Society in its good work
of laying bare with pick and spade the buried mysteries along the Nile.
And this rivalry, which was strong between the societies and bitter
between their presidents, became acute in the persons of their
secretaries, both of whom were women. Madame Gianclis, who served the
Boston Society, boasted Egyptian blood in her veins, a claim which Mrs.
Athelstone, who acted as secretary for her husband's society, politely
conceded, with the qualification that some ancestor of her rival had
contributed a dash of the Senegambian as well.

[Illustration: "'Aw, fergit it.'"]

This remark, duly reported to Madame Gianclis, had not put her in a
humor to concede Madame Blavatsky's soul, or any part of it, to Mrs.
Athelstone. Promptly on hearing of her pretensions, so rumor had it,
the Boston woman had announced the reincarnation of Theosophy's high
priestess in herself. And Boston believers were inclined to accept her
view, as it was difficult for them to understand how any soul with
liberty of action could deliberately choose a New York residence.

Now, all these things had filtered through to Naylor from those just
without the temple gates, for whatever the quarrels of the two societies
and their enemies, they tried to keep them to themselves. They had had
experience with publicity and had found that ridicule goes hand in hand
with it in this iconoclastic age. But out of these rumors, unconfirmed
though they were, grew a vision in Naylor's brain--a vision of a
glorified spread in the _Sunday Banner's_ magazine section. Under
a two-page "h