first time. Every once in awhile _en route_ we would plant our fore feet
and try to rub our muzzles off, but the hands which held our chains were
gentle but firm, and we always ended by going.

On one Sunday we were invited to have _déjeuner_ with the Countess S.,
and as it was her last day to receive she had invited us to remain and
meet her friends. At the breakfast there were perhaps sixteen of us and
the conversation fell upon palmistry. We had just seen Cheiro in London,
and as he had amiably explained a good many of our lines to us, I was
speaking of this when the old Duchesse de Z. thrust her little wrinkled
paw loaded down with jewels across the plate of her neighbour and said:

"Mademoiselle, can you see anything in the lines of my hand?"

I make no pretence of understanding palmistry, but I saw in her hand a
queer little mark that Cheiro had explained to us from a chart. I took
her hand in mine and all the conversation ceased to hear the pearls of
wisdom which were about to drop from my lips. The duchesse was very much
interested in the occult and known to be given to table tipping and the
invocation of spirits.

"I see something here," I began, hesitatingly, "which looks to me as if
you had once been threatened with a great danger, but had been
miraculously preserved," I said.

The old woman drew her hand away.

"Humph," she muttered with her mouth full of homard. "I wondered if you
would see that. It was assassination I escaped. It was enough to leave a
mark, eh, mademoiselle?"