Don't you think so ?" My witch glanced up at her hostess with a piercing dart of the keen brown eyes, held her wine-glass half raised, and then electrified me by uttering, in the same low voice, audible to me alone, but quite clearly and unhesitatingly, these astounding words: "I think, before twelve mouths are out, MR.

LE GEYT WILL HAVE MURDERED HER!" For a minute I could not answer, so startling was the effect of this confident prediction.

One does not expect to be told such things at lunch, over the port and peaches, about one's dearest friends, beside their own mahogany.

And the assured air of unfaltering conviction with which Hilda Wade said it to a complete stranger took my breath away.
WHY did she think so at all?
And IF she thought so why choose ME as the recipient of her singular confidences?
I gasped and wondered.
"What makes you fancy anything so unlikely ?" I asked aside at last, behind the babel of voices.

"You quite alarm me." She rolled a mouthful of apricot ice reflectively on her tongue, and then murmured, in a similar aside, "Don't ask me now.