“The bigger the brain the more easily influenced. She couldn't have so impressed an idiot, or an illiterate, unreceptive man. Let me tell you how a hundred people were fooled lately.” “I should be delighted to hear you tell it.” “You should have sympathy for them, after your spiritualistic experience,” said Mary with a smile. “There is a married couple in this city whom we will call Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright, because those are not their names. They have been married less than two years. He is 68 and she 28, so you see it was what they call a December and May union. It was worse. He is a bank president and his god is money--his diversion sitting in his elegant library and reading _de luxe_ editions of the world's literary masterpieces. She is young, and beautiful, and craves society, attention, admiration. “She didn't get the last two at home, but society furnished them. He attended her to parties and receptions and then went back to his library until it was time to escort her home. “One night when he went for her she could not be found. No one had seen her leave--she had mysteriously disappeared. Mr. Isburn gave me the case. I'll make the story short for it is eleven o'clock.” “I know how to get out. Mr. Cass told me.” “Your knowledge of a method of egress does not warrant an extension of your visit to midnight, does it?” asked Mary laughingly. “Considering the attractions presented, I think they do,” replied Quincy, banteringly. She resumed her story. “There was a man in the case, young, handsome, and wealthy. Just such a man as she should have married. They had planned an elopement to Europe. Not together. She was to go to Liverpool, he was to follow later to Paris, and there meet her. Quite ingenious, wasn't it? Our agent at Liverpool was called to locate her and prevent her inamorata from communicating with her, at the same time using his influence to induce her to return to Boston without meeting her lover. His powers of persuasion, I mean our agent's, must have been great, for she consented. “A month later she attended a reception next door to the house from which she disappeared, and silenced the tongue of scandal by saying that she had been hastily summoned to the bedside of a sick friend, her chum at Wellesley, and had returned home only the day previous. Her last statement was true. Good detective work by a good detective, and a great, big white lie fooled her friends and acquaintances, but if I were her husband she would not lack attention or admiration in the future, and I would furnish it.” “When I get married, I will bear your admonition in mind.”