upon a phantom tam-o'-shanter, which she was making as a Christmas
surprise for her husband.

"When Captain Kidd began his story," said Cassandra, "he made one very bad
mistake, and yet one which was prompted by that courtesy which all men
instinctively adopt when addressing women. When he entered the room he
removed his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to convince
me of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could see the
workings of his mind. While you ladies were watching his lips or his eyes,
some of you taking in the gorgeous details of his dress, all of you
hanging upon his every word, I kept my eye fixed firmly upon his
imagination, and I saw, what you did not, _that he was drawing wholly upon
that_!"

"How extraordinary!" cried Elizabeth.

"Yes--and fortunate," said Cassandra. "Had I not done so, a week hence we
should, every one of us, have been lost in the surging wickedness of the
city of Paris."

"But, Cassandra," said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to the
beautiful city by the Seine, "he told us we were going to Paris."

[Illustration: "'HE TOLD US WE WERE GOING TO PARIS'"]

"Of course he did," said Madame Récamier, "and in so many words. Certainly
he was not drawing upon his imagination there."

"And one might be lost in a very much worse place," put in Marguerite de
Valois, "if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris at all. I fancy