A WAITING-MAID'S ROMANCE.

Hetty Wilkins was bitterly grieved at her dismissal from the service of Mrs. Winans, and her vanity was wounded by the suggestion that Lindsey Warwick had been courting her simply to keep up with the movements of the Winans family and further his own designs.

"Oh, no, madam, he cannot be the same man, I'm sure," she declared stubbornly.

"But, Hetty, there can be no mistake. My daughter recognized him, and he declared to my son that he was your lover. Now, my good girl, there is a reward of ten thousand dollars offered by Senator Winans for Lindsey Warwick's apprehension. Suppose you earn it by delivering this wretch up to justice," suggested Mrs. Winans, very much in earnest over the matter.

So Hetty departed, angry at her dismissal, and firm in the belief that her lover was innocent of the charges brought against him.

But when Watson Hunter came no more, and her letters to him elicited no reply, her loving confidence grew faint, and suspicion awakened in her mind.

"I will find him if I have to employ a detective," she vowed spitefully.

But for Hetty's strong faith in fortune-tellers, it is likely that her absconding lover might have eluded her forever, but when a month had passed in futile efforts she suddenly bethought herself of invoking the aid of a clairvoyant in her search for the truant.

She had returned to Washington several weeks before, and it was now the middle of August. On consulting the papers she selected from the advertisements one in a very obscure locality, and made her way thither without delay. The mind-reader and clairvoyant, as she called herself, was located on a dirty little street in a villainous-looking tobacco shop. When Hetty entered, the slovenly-looking old woman was serving a customer with cigars, and the maid was startled to find in her the same woman to whom she had once advised Ethel to apply.

"I want my fortune told," she said in an undertone to the woman.

"Come into the back room, then, and I'll send my son to wait on the shop."

With her pretty nose in the air, at the vile odors of the place, the smart maid followed into the back room, where a slovenly man with long hair and full whiskers was making some drawings at a little table.

"You must wait on the shop while I tell the young lady's fortune," the woman said to him, and he rose with a muttered word of impatience.

Hetty was not the least interested in the gruff man, and she scarcely knew why she cast a searching glance upon him.

But when she looked at him she met a glance of startled recognition that made her foolish heart leap with wild excitement. The next moment she clutched his arm, crying sobbingly:

"Oh, Watson, Watson, so I've found you at last!"

"The devil!" cried Lindsey Warwick, trying to shake her off, for his first impulse was to snatch his hat and run.

But Hetty clasped his neck with both arms, and clung to him like a wild-cat, despite his struggles.

"Let me go! let me go! I don't know you! I'm a stranger to you—that isn't my name!" he vociferated wildly. "Mother, take her off and hold her, won't you?"

Thus adjured, the old woman come to his relief, and soon had the pretty maid a prisoner in her own strong arms.

"What's the matter with you, you little crazy wild-cat?" she demanded roughly, but Hetty was gazing malignantly at Warwick, who regarded her with an injured air.

"Young woman, you've made a mistake. I don't know you!" he was saying.

"Oh, don't I, Mr. Lindsey Warwick?" cried Hetty, taking revenge for her slighted love. "Maybe that ain't your name, neither! Maybe I don't intend to scream for the police, and give you up to them, and claim the reward, you villain!"

She was opening her mouth for a prolonged shriek, when a hand was clapped over it, and Lindsey Warwick cried out laughingly:

"You silly darling, can't you take a joke? Of course my name isn't Warwick, but Watson Hunter, and I was only teasing you a little to pay you back for running off from Rosemont and leaving me in the lurch."

Hetty gasped in his clutch and he loosened it gently, seeing that his falsehoods had begun to bewilder and soften her angry mood.

"Why didn't you write to me when you left Rosemont?" continued the arch deceiver. "I was down there a day or two after the family packed up to leave, and I thought you had gone away with them and given me the jilt. But you won't get away from me again, for we'll go to the preacher this very day, won't we, dearie?"