"But if I've only met you once at a masked ball—"

   "Can't you be brought to realise that every time you mistake me for that woman of the masked ball you turn the dagger in the wound?" she demanded.

   "But if you won't invite me to call upon you, how and when am I to see you again?"

   "I haven't an idea," she answered, cheerfully. "I must go now. Good-by." She rose.

   "One moment," he interposed. "Before you go will you allow me to look at the palm of your left hand?"

   "What for?"

   "I can tell fortunes. I'm extremely good at it," he boasted. "I'll tell you yours."

   "Oh, very well," she assented, sitting down again: and guilelessly she pulled off her glove.

   He took her hand, a beautifully slender, nervous hand, warm and soft, with rosy, tapering fingers.

   "Oho! you

    are

   an old maid after all," he cried. "There's no wedding ring."

   "You villain!" she gasped, snatching the hand away.

   "I promised to tell your fortune. Haven't I told it correctly?"

   "You needn't rub it in, though. Eccentric old maids don't like to be reminded of their condition."

   "Will you marry

    me

   ?"

   "Why do you ask?"

   "Partly for curiosity. Partly because it's the only way

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