It is said that in this rôle Editha had no difficulty in raising funds. It was easy to encourage a prosperous young man into a love trap and make him believe she would soon marry him. “Then one day she would find that she had to pay a large sum of money to meet a necessary obligation, that her careless bankers in Bavaria had failed to remit a few hundred thousand dollars, on account of which she most reluctantly accepted temporary relief from the rich suitor. She took as much as she dared and thereafter cut him.” In this way she managed to cheat the youth of Baltimore out of about a quarter of a million dollars. She gave herself up to luxury and extravagance; took freely to smoking cigarettes impregnated with opium and was soon landed in Bellevue Hospital suffering from “acute nervous exhaustion.” One day, just as she was nearly cured, she sprang out of bed, stabbed an attendant and attempted to kill her doctor, and several persons were seriously wounded before she was secured. As a result she was sent to the asylum for the insane on Ward’s Island, where she was detained for a year, during which time she showed no traces of insanity and it was concluded that her attempt at murder was premeditated; but as she had been committed as insane with no evidence to controvert it the law was powerless and she was released. Her next venture was in the field of hypnotism, where she was an adept, but now known as Mrs. Messant and a widow, for though a young doctor, either through fear or fondness, had married her soon after her discharge from Ward’s Island, he had survived the marriage less than a year. As “one can always find fools if one really looks for them” she had no difficulty in surrounding herself with dupes but as the widow of an obscure doctor was not _persona grata_ in the circles of high society where the highest paying fools are to be found she set to work to find an entrée. Her search was not for long. Soon she discovered a certain General Diss Debar; a man without money or “mind of his own” but he filled her need, easily yielded to her cajoleries and presently Editha Salomen, Countess Landsfeldt, Baroness Rosenthal, Messant became Ann O’Delia Diss Debar. As the wife of a general, society smiled on her again and she lived in comfort. The rich courted “hypnotism and general humbug and the wily woman was equal to the requirement.” As time went on, however, she began to squander the money that flowed into her coffers. A couple of children were born to her. People began to tire of hypnotism, her income waned, and it became necessary for her to set her wits to work and cast her net for a fresh victim.