The hands of the Dresden clock upon the white travertine mantelshelf of Lady Sidonia’s boudoir pointed to the small hours. There was a discreet knock at the door. The maid, a pale, pretty young woman, who was wielding the hair-brush, laid the weapon down, and answered the knock.

“Who is it, Pauline?” asked Pauline’s mistress, with her eyes upon the mirror, which certainly framed a picture well worth looking at.

“Her Grace’s maid, my lady, asking whether you are too tired for a chat?”

“Say that I shall be delighted, and give me the blue Japanese kimono instead of this pink thing. Will my hair do? Because, if it needs no more brushing, you can go to bed.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

The door opened; trailing silks swept over the carpet....

“I can’t kiss you through all this brown-gold silk,” said the Duchess’s voice. “Stop, though! You shall have it on the top of your head.” And the kiss descended, light as a puff of thistle-down. “I kiss Cull there sometimes, when I want him to be in a good temper. He says it thrills right down to the tips of his toes.... You’re smiling! I guess you think the stock of thrills ought to be exhausted by this time—three years since we stood up together on the deck of Cluny F. Farradaile’s anchored airship, a posse of detectives from Blueberry Street guarding the ends of the fore and aft cables, where they were anchored three hundred feet below in the grounds of the N’York Æther Club, just to prevent any one of the dozens of Society girls who’d tried their level best to catch Cull and failed, from coming along with a bowie and cutting ’em.... You remember the pars. in all the papers, headed, ‘A Marriage Made in Heaven,’ I guess?”

“Of course, of course,” said the Duchess’s hostess and dearest friend.

“My invention,” said her Grace, “and mighty smart, I reckon. I’d always said I’d be married in a real original way—and I was. The only drawback to the affair was that she pitched—I mean the airship—and the Minister, and Cull, and Poppa, and the inventor—that’s Cluny F. Farradaile—were taken poorly before the close of the cer’mony. As for my sex, I’m proud to say that Amurrican women can rise superior even to air-sickness when Paris frocks are in question. But when they wound us down we were glad enough to get back to dry land. We found a representative of the Customs waiting for us, by the way; and if Poppa hadn’t gone to law about it, and proved that we were really fixed on to the States by our cables, we’d have had to plank down the duty on every jewel we’d got on. Say, pet, I’m perishing for a smoke!”

The Duchess was supplied with cigarettes. Pauline placed upon a little table the materials that “factorize,” as the Duchess would have said, towards the composition of cognac and soda, and glided out.

“Now I call that a real pretty, meek-looking creature,” said her Grace, blowing a little flight of smoke rings in the direction of the door. “If she’s as clever as she’s nice, Siddie, you’ve got a treasure!”

“She is a good maid,” responded Lady Sidonia. “For one thing, she knows a great deal about the toilette, and on the subject of the complexion she’s really quite an authority. She knows something of massage, too—on the American system—for, though an English girl, she has lived in your country——”

“Oh!” said the Duchess, with an accent of interest. “Has she, indeed?”

“She’s reasonable, too,” went on the maid’s mistress; “and not a limpet in the way of sticking to one mode of doing the hair and refusing to learn any other. Then she can wave——”

“It is an accomplishment,” said the Duchess thoughtfully. “Now, my woman either frizzes you like a Fiji, or leaves you dank and straight like a mermaid. Why does hair never wave naturally—out of a novel? It’s a question for a Convention. And men—dear idiots!—are such believers in the reality of ripples. There! I’ve been implored over and over again for ‘just that little bit with the wave in it’ to keep in a locket—hundreds and hundreds of times. I guess Cull’s wiser now; but once you’ve seen your husband’s teeth in a tumbler, you’ve entered into a Conjugal Reciprocity Convention: ‘Believe in me—not as much of me as really belongs to me, but as much as you see—and I’ll return the compliment!’ Yes, I guess I’ll take some S. and B. It’s an English accomplishment, and I’ve mastered it thoroughly. We Amurricans rinse out with Apollinaris or ice-water, which isn’t half so comforting, especially in trouble.”

And the Duchess heaved a butterfly’s sigh, which scarcely stirred her filmy laces, and smoothed her prettiest eyebrow with one exquisite finger-tip.

“Trouble!” exclaimed her friend. “My dear, you’re the happiest of women. Don’t try to persuade me that you’ve got a silent sorrow!”

“Not exactly a silent one, because I’m going to confide in you; but still it is a sorrow.” The Duchess confided one hand to her dearest friend’s consoling clasp, and wiped away a tear with a minute handkerchief that would not have dried half a dozen. “Perhaps Amurrican blood is warmer than English; but, anyhow, our family affections are vurry much more strongly developed over in the States than yours are here. And I had a letter from Momma by yesterday’s mail that would have melted a heart of rock.” She dried a second tear. “If Momma lives till the end of Creation,” she said, “she will never, never get over it. And I don’t wonder!”

“Darling, if it would really do you any good to tell me——” breathed Lady Sidonia.

“I tell all my friends,” said the Duchess with a sigh; “and they’re invariably of one opinion—that Momma was cruelly victimized.”

“She is——”

“Call her forty, dear. It would be just cruel to say anything more. People call me lovely and all those things,” said the Duchess candidly, “and I allow they’re correct. Well, compared with what Momma was at my age, I’m real ordinary.”

“Oh!”

“Frozen fact! And you can grasp the idea that when—in spite of every effort—Momma began to lose her figure and her looks, she felt it!”

“Every woman must!”

“But the more she felt it, the more she seemed to expand.... Grief runs to fat, I do believe,” said the Duchess. “Of course, Poppa’s allowance to Momma being liber’l—even for a Corn King—she had unlimited funds at her disposal. To begin with, she rented a medical specialist.”

“Who dieted her?”

“My dear, for a woman accustomed to French cookery, and with the national predilection for cookies and candy, it must have been——”

“Torture!”

“One gluten biscuit and the eye of a mutton cutlet for dinner. Think of it! Beef-juice and dry toast for breakfast, ditto for supper. And she used to skip—a woman of that size, too—for hours! And her trainers came every morning at five o’clock, and they’d make her just put on a sweater and take her between them for a sharp trot round Central Park, just as if she’d been a gentleman jockey sworn to ride at so many stone for a Plate. And the number of stone Momma got off——”

“She got them off?”

“I guess she got them off,” said the Duchess. “Poppa talked of having an elegant tombstone set up in Central Park to commemorate the greater portion of a wife buried there! then he gave up the notion. And then Momma made handsome presents to her specialist and her trainers, and contracted with the cleverest operator in N’York to make a face.”

“To make a face?” repeated Lady Sidonia.

“To make a face for Momma that matched her youthful figure,” said the Duchess composedly. “My! the time that man took in creating a surface to work on! She slept for a fortnight with her countenance covered with slices of raw veal.”

“Horrible!” shuddered the listener.

“And the massaging and steaming that went on!”

“I can imagine!”

“The foundations being properly laid——” continued the Duchess, lighting another cigarette.

Lady Sidonia went into a little uncontrollable shriek of laughter. “As though ... she had been a house!... Ha, ha, ha!”

“My dear,” returned the Duchess, shaking her beautiful head, “the terms employed in the contract were precisely those I have quoted.... The specialist laid the foundations, and carried the contract out. Momma’s appearance delighted everyone, except Poppa, who has old-fashioned notions, and complained of feeling shy in the presence of a stranger. Fortunately their Silver Wedding eventuated just then, and his conscience—Poppa’s conscience is, for a corn speculator’s, wonderfully sensitive—ceased to annoy him.”

“And your mother?”

“Momma wore her new face for six months with the greatest satisfaction,” said the Duchess. “Of course, she had to lay up for repairs pretty often, but the specialist was there to carry them out. Unluckily, he contracted a severe chill in the N’York winter season and died. His wife put his tools and enamels and things in his coffin. She said she knew business would be brisk when he got up again, and she didn’t wish any other speculator to chip in before him.” The Duchess sighed. “Then came Momma’s great trouble.”

“There was no other operator to—take up the—the contract?” hinted Lady Sidonia.

“There were dozens,” said the Duchess, “and Momma tried them all. My dear, you may surmise what she looked like.”

“A heterogeneous mingling of styles.”

“It was impossible to conjecture,” said the Duchess confidentially, “to what period the original structure belonged. By day Momma resorted to a hat and voile.”

“Even in the house?”

“Even in the house. By night—well, I guess you’ve noticed that a human work of art, illuminated by electric light, isn’t seen under the most favorable conditions.”

“There is a pitiless accuracy!”

“An unmerciful candor about its revelations. After one unusually brilliant reception, Momma retired from society and took to spiritualism. She persevered until she had materialized that demised face-specialist, and extracted some definite raps in the way of advice.”

“And what did he advise?”

“He suggested, through the medium, that Momma should apply to the Milwaukee Mentalists.”

“A Society of Faith Healers?”

“‘Occult Operatists,’ they call themselves on the prospectuses. As for the cult of the Society,” said the Duchess pensively, “one might call it a mayonnaise of Freemasonry, Theosophy, Hypnotism, Humbug, and Hoodoo. But the humbug, like salad oil in the mayonnaise, was the chief ingredient.” The Duchess stopped to draw breath.

“And into this vortex Mrs. Van Wacken was drawn?” sighed Lady Sidonia.

“Sucked down and swallowed,” said the Duchess, who had been Miss Van Wacken. “They undertook to make Momma right over again, brand new, by prayer and faith and—a mentally electrified bath. For which treatment Momma was to pay ten thousand down.”

“Pounds!” shrieked the horrified Lady Sidonia.

“Dollars,” corrected the Duchess.

“In advance?” cried the listener.

“In advance, after a demonstration had been given which was practically to satisfy Momma that the Milwaukee Mentalists were square,” said the Duchess. “My word! when I remember how they bluffed that poor darling—I should want to laugh, if I didn’t cry.” She dried another tear.

“Do go on!” entreated her friend.

“The High Priestess of the Community was a woman,” went on the Duchess, “just as cool and ca’am and cunning as they make ’em.”

“I guessed as much,” said Lady Sidonia.

“It takes a woman to know and work on another woman’s weak points,” rejoined the Duchess. “The High Priestess pretended to be in communication with a spirit. ‘The Mystikos,’ they called him, and he resided, when he was at home, in a crystal ball; but bullion was the real totem of the tribe. Well—but it’s getting late——”

“I shall not sleep a wink until I have heard the whole story,” said Lady Sidonia.

“And Cull and your husband are comparing notes about their wives in the smoking-room,” said the Duchess.

“Well, the Theologa——”

“The—the—what?”

“The Theologa—that was the professional title of the High Priestess—whose or’nary name was Mrs. Gideon J. Swale,” her Grace went on, “talked a great deal to Momma, and made some passes over her, and got the poor dear completely under her thumb. Momma wasn’t the only victim, you must know. There were four other ladies, all wealthy, and each one, like Momma, the leader of a fashionable society set——”

“And—no longer young?”

“And past their first bloom,” amended the Duchess. “And each of ’em had agreed to plank down the same sum in cold dollars.”

“Fifty thousand in all,” said Lady Sidonia with a sigh. She could have done so much with fifty thousand dollars, even though American money was such beastly stuff. “Worth——”

“Worth riskin’ a term in a N’York State prison for—I guess so!” said the Duchess. “Well, Momma and the other ladies signed on to the terms, and went through a cer’mony of purification—which included learnin’ a kind of catechism used in admittin’ a new member into the Occult Operatists’ Community—an’ several hymns. That was to make them worthy to receive the Revelation from the Mystikos, I guess. At least, the Theologa——”

“Mrs. Gideon J. Swale?”

“The same. The Theologa said so. In a week or so—durin’ which period they lived at the house of the Community—chiefly on nuts an’ spring-water——”

“For which entertainment they paid——” Lady Sidonia hinted.

“Delmonico rates!” said the Duchess. “Well, it was settled that the Demonstration was to come off, with the Mystikos’ consent.”

“What sort of——”

“Demonstration? Cur’us,” said the Duchess, “and interesting. There was a woman—a Mrs. Gower, English by birth, Amurrican naturalized—who was to be the Subject. She was a widow—her husband having met his death in an explosion at an oil-gas producin’ factory. Stoker to the gas-generator he was, and his wife had brought him his dinner—fried steak in a tin pail—when the hull kitboodle blew up. Husband was killed—wife was saved, though so scarred and disfigured about the face as to be changed from a pretty woman into a plain one.”

“And she—this scarred, disfigured woman—was to be made pretty again by the Occult Operatists?” hazarded Lady Sidonia.

“Guessed it first time,” nodded the Duchess. “The cer’mony took place in a temple belonging to the Community, all painted over red and yellow triangles and things like T-squares. At the upper end was an altar, raised on three steps, and on this was the ground glass ball in which the Mystikos lived when he wasn’t somewhere else, and an electric light was fixed over it, so that it just dazzled your eyes to look at. Below the altar was a seat for the Theologa, and, you bet, Mrs. Gideon J. Swale came out strong in the costume line. Momma was reminded of Titiens in Norma, she said.”

“I want to hear about the Demonstration,” pleaded Lady Sidonia plaintively.

“My! you’re in a hurry,” said the Duchess. “But it was to be brought off in a bath—if you must know!”

“A bath?”

“A bath that was full of water and boiled herbs, and had been properly incanted over by the Theologa,” explained the Duchess. “There were incense-burners all round, and not far off a kind of tent of white linen, all over red triangles and T’s. And the five candidates for renovation—I mean Momma and the other ladies—sat on a form, in bloomers, each with a little purse-bag containing bills for ten thousand dollars, and her heart full of hope and joy.”

“Oh! go on,” cried Lady Sidonia.

“The temple was circular, something like the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake City,” said the Duchess, “and the Occult Operatives—a round hundred of ’em—occupied the forms, to assist with the prayers and hymn-singin’. Of course, the proceedings began with a hymn sung in several different keys. I surmise the effect was impressive.”

Lady Sidonia elevated her eyebrows.

“Momma said it was wailful, and made her feel as though live clams were crawling up and down her back. But then the bloomers may account for that,” said the Duchess, “and I guess the temple registers were out of order. Then—the lights were suddenly turned out!”

“O-oh!” shivered Lady Sidonia.

“Except the electric stars over the Mystikos’ crystal ball,” went on the Duchess, “so that all the light in the temple seemed to come from the altar. Momma said that made her feel those crawling clams worse than ever.”

“Could one see plainly what was going on?” asked Lady Sidonia.

“It was a religious kind of dimness,” said the Duchess, “but most everything showed plainly. For instance, when the hideous woman who was to be the Subject of the Demonstration came out of the linen tent in a suit of bloomers like Momma’s and the others, she appeared to be plain enough. Do you keep a cat, dear?” whispered the Duchess.

“Why? No!” said Lady Sidonia.

“I thought I heard a scratching at the door,” explained the Duchess, with her mouth close to Lady Sidonia’s ear. “Don’t open it.... I’d rather—— Where was I?”

“The Subject was in bloomers,” said Lady Sidonia.

“Oh, well! Momma and the other ladies were asked to look at her earnestly, to fix her features in their minds, so that they couldn’t but recognize her again if they saw her. She was a slight woman, Momma said, about thirty-five, and but for her scarred face would have been pretty, with her pale complexion, brown wavy hair, and large gray eyes with black lashes.... She had one peculiarity about the left hand, which no one who ever saw it could forget. What are you listening for?”

“I hear something at the door,” faltered Lady Sidonia in a nervous undertone.

“Fancy. You don’t keep a cat. Well, the Subject went up to the altar and knelt, and the Theologa—Mrs. Gideon J. Swale—invoked the Mystikos in a solemn kind of conjuration, and the crystal ball on the altar began to hop up and down.”

“No!”

“Fact! Then it rose right off the altar and hung suspended in the air, and the hymn broke out worse than ever, and the Theologa led the Subject down the altar steps and put her into the bath.”

“Well?” gasped Lady Sidonia.

“The Theologa threw incense on the burners round the bath, and perfect clouds rose up all round it, completely hiding the Subject,” explained the Duchess.

“Then she——”

“She began to scream.”

“To scream?”

“As if she was in absolute agony; and Momma and the four other ladies nearly fainted off their form, they were so perfectly terrified.”

“And—what happened?”

“There was a scream more piercing than any of the others.”

“Oh!”

“The clouds of incense became so thick that you couldn’t see your hand.”

“And——”

“The Occult Operatives sang more loudly and less in tune than ever, and the crystal ball kept on jumping up and down. Then the clouds of smoke cleared away, and the lights went up, and——” The Duchess paused provokingly.

“Go on, go on!”

“And the Subject got out of the bath.... And she had been ugly and scarred when she went in, but now she was young and pretty!”

“Impossible!”

“It was the same woman to all appearances, but changed—wonderfully changed. The same pretty brown hair, the same eyes, gray, with long curly black lashes, and the same strange malformation of one finger of the left hand. But no cicatrices, none of the seams and marks that made the other frightful.”

“The other!”

“Did I say the other?”

“Certainly!”

“Then I guess I let the cat out of the bag.”

“Ah, I begin to understand!”

“I thought you’d tumble.”

“There were two women—exactly alike!”

“No, goosey! One woman younger than the other, and looking exactly like her, as she looked before the injury to her face.”

“Sisters?”

“No. Mother and daughter.”

“And the change in the bath?”

“Managed with a false bottom and trap exit. The sort of trick one sees exposed at the Egyptian Hall.”

“And the daughter took the mother’s place?”

“Under cover of the incense—and the singing. The tent held two, you understand.”

“But Mrs. Van Wacken?”

“Momma and the other ladies—once the thing had been proved genuine—were only too anxious to plank down their money and hop into the wonderful bath. So they went up to the Theologa, and she blessed them and laid the five money-bags on the altar, and then——”

“Then——”

“Then all the lights went out,” said the Duchess, “and there was a kind of stampede, and Momma and the four other ladies found themselves alone in the temple. The Theologa and the Subject and the hundred members of the Community who’d sat round on the seats and helped with the hymns were gone—and the dollar bags had vanished. The doors of the temple were locked, and Momma and the four other victims had to stop there until the morning. An express man heard their cries for help, broke in the door, and took them to an hotel in his wagon. Dear, I’m going to toddle to by-by!”

“It was an awful—awful swindle,” said Lady Sidonia, as she and the Duchess kissed good-night.

“And the exposure!” The Duchess shrugged her shoulders. “Momma and the other ladies wanted it hushed, but the police went into the matter.”

“Were the swindlers arrested?”

“The Theologa was caught at Amsterdam, and extradited. The Community got off. Nobody could prove any of them had had any of the money. I guess,” said the Duchess, yawning, “Mrs. Gideon J. Swale knows where it is. But she’s in prison, now, dear. And I hope she likes it. As for the woman and her daughter, whose likenesses to each other had been made use of by Mrs. Gideon—they’re still at large. Good-night.”

“Do tell me,” pressed Lady Sidonia. “That peculiarity of one finger of the left hand possessed by both mother and daughter—what was it?”

“It was,” said the Duchess, “a double nail.”

“How odd!” said Lady Sidonia. “My maid has the same queer deformity, and it is the only thing I don’t like about her.... She hates to have it noticed.”

“I guess she does,” said the Duchess.

“Look at her hand to-morrow,” said Lady Sidonia. “It’s awfully queer. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” said the Duchess. “But she won’t be here to-morrow!”

Lady Sidonia’s eyes opened to their widest extent. “Won’t—be here?”

“No. She is the girl who got out of the bath!”

“Good heavens!” cried Lady Sidonia. “How do you——Are you——”

“I had been shown her photograph by the police—recognized her the moment I saw her,” said the Duchess. “I’m not mistaken any, you may be sure. But you needn’t trouble about her. She’s gone!”

“Gone!”

“She was listening at the door, and heard the whole story. When you spoke about the cat, she made tracks. She’s clear of this house by now, you may bet your back teeth. Don’t worry about her,” said the Duchess. “I’ll send my own maid to you in the morning. Good-night!”