The Heart Line. Gelett Burgess
some one who will."
"Granthope, perhaps?" Cayley suggested with irony.
"I have no doubt he'd understand my motives better than you do!"
"Well, it might be an interesting experiment. Miss Payson at Carminetti's—there's a San Francisco contrast for you!"
"You may add it to your list of Improbabilities. Study me, if you like, and put me in your list. You may find that I have a surprise or two left for you." She smiled to herself and threw back her head proudly.
"You do tempt me to try it," he said, coolly watching her. "You'd look as inconsistent there as those old French family portraits in that saloon out on the Beach—Lords of Les Baux, they were, I believe, administrators of the high justice, the middle and the low!
"And, oh!" he added, "that reminds me of another thing I found to-day while I was looking over a file of the Chronicle, digging up this trade dollar business. It was way back in 1877; a queer story, but I suppose it's true."
"What was it?" Clytie asked. The rays of the lamp shot her hair with gold sparks as she sat in a low chair, listening.
"Why, there was an old woman who was half crazy; she lived down south of Market Street somewhere in the most fearful squalor."
Clytie suddenly moved back into the shadow.
"Yes, yes,—what else?" She followed his words with absorbed attention.
"There was no furniture except a lot of boxes and a bookcase. And here's the remarkable thing: there was about two inches of rubbish and dirt matted down all over the floor, where she used to hide money and food and any old thing, wrapped in little packages. When she died, her stuff was auctioned off, and they found a trunk with a whole new wedding outfit in it. How's that?"
"What was her name?" Clytie asked breathlessly.
"I don't remember it. She was a sort of clairvoyant, I believe. There was a little boy lived with her, too. It seems he disappeared after she died. Ran away."
Clytie leaned forward again, her eyes wide open and staring. Her hands were tightly clasped together.
"A little boy?" she repeated.
"Why, that's what it said in the paper. Great story, isn't it?"
Clytie's breath came and went rapidly, as if she were trying to breathe in a storm, amidst the dashing of waves. The color went from her cheeks, her thin nostrils dilated. Then, retreating into the shade again, she managed to say:
"It certainly is romantic."
"No one would believe a thing like that could be true," he followed.
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