"That ring is really the cause of my being here to-day," she continued. "The scarabaeus was given to me some years ago by Professor----" (she gave the name of a well-known American Egyptologist). "He made a great pet of me when I was a child, and I begged it from him. When I was going to be married last year he insisted upon having it set for me by Tiffany as a wedding present, and he then told me there was no doubt at all about its being a genuine _antique_. He had come across it many years before by a curious chance when travelling in Egypt, and had been assured that it was a genuine _Cleopatra_ relic. 'I can't answer for that,' he said, laughing, 'but it is certainly many centuries old. I have no doubt it is genuine so far as age goes.' Well, the night my cousin and I came here together I did not take off my gloves until _after_ we had gone in to the _seance_ room, so no one could have seen my ring--and you know Mrs Gray's sittings always begin in the dark? I took my gloves off when I found we had to sit in a circle holding hands, and one of the first materialisations was announced to be that of Cleopatra." (_I_ had seen "Cleopatra" more than once in 1886, in the same house--E. K. B.) "She rushed across the room in the complete darkness, seized my right hand, amongst all the hands in a circle of twenty people or more, almost tore this special ring from my finger, and said in a tone of indescribable grief and longing: '_Mine! Mine!_ Ah, _Chem!_ CHEM!'" This was sufficiently startling, even apart from the mention of _Chem_, as the ancient name for Egypt, in a _milieu_ of this kind! The ring was faithfully restored later in the evening; and the young lady who owned it had been sufficiently impressed by the circumstances to confide them to her kind professor, and also to pay more than one visit to Mrs Stoddart Gray since the episode had occurred, which was just six months before our meeting there. During this second visit to America I made the acquaintance, and, I trust I may say, gained the friendship, of Miss Lilian Whiting, so well known by many thousands of grateful readers. We saw a great deal of each other in Boston, and during one of my long chats with her in her pretty sitting-room at the Brunswick Hotel, she told me of the visit of Lady Henry Somerset and Miss Frances Willard to that city, some years before our conversation. Miss Whiting also mentioned a friend who had accompanied these two ladies, and who had been taken ill, and had died very suddenly in the hospital at Boston.