Today's Stichomancy for Fiona Apple

scattered with gold and bank paper? There was a tableau for you! It was I who came, and you were lucky in that. It might have been any one - your cousin as well as another.'

'You have me there, sir,' I admitted. 'I had neglected all precautions, and you do right to be angry. APROPOS, Mr. Romaine, how did you come yourself, and how long have you been in the house?' I added, surprised, on the retrospect, not to have heard him arrive.

'I drove up in a chaise and pair,' he returned. 'Any one might have heard me. But you were not listening, I suppose? being so extremely at your ease in the very house of your enemy, and under a

"I trust you," he said, "as you see; but I expect some return. I have made you my aunt intending to marry you some day. You are worth more to me than Esther in managing my uncle. In a year from now, we must be in Paris; the only place where beauty really lives. You will amuse yourself much better there than here; it is a perpetual carnival. I shall return to the army, and become a general, and you will be a great lady. There's our future; now work for it. But I must have a pledge to bind this agreement. You are to give me, within a month from now, a power of attorney from my uncle, which you must obtain under pretence of relieving him of the fatigues of business. Also, a month later, I must have a special power of attorney to transfer the income

the occasion. Her round, strong neck was as usual swathed high and tight in white, and the huge dog-collar girdled her waist according to her custom. She had taken off her hat. Her yellow hair rolled back from her round forehead and cool pink cheeks like a veritable nimbus, and for the fiftieth time Condy remarked the charming contrast of her small, deep-brown eyes in the midst of this white satin, yellow hair, white skin, and exquisite pink cheeks. An hour passed. Then two.