“Yes, I can, but you have to sit very near the piano to hear me.” “Then you have some other accomplishments which you have concealed from me,” said Gerard, affecting a judicial frown. Miss Davison laughed merrily. “Well, I have one, but wild horses shan’t drag from me what it is. And, if you knew, you would not advise me to use it.” “Come, come, I must have complete confession. No half-way measures. Let me see if I can’t suggest a way of utilizing this mysterious accomplishment.” She laughed, blushed crimson, and suddenly opening her hand, showed him, lying flat on the palm, a little silver pencil-case, at sight of which he uttered an exclamation. “Why, that’s mine, isn’t it?” said he. “How did you--” He stopped, she laughed, and Rose Aldington, who was sitting near, joined in her mirth, which was of rather a shame-faced kind. “Showing off again, Rachel?” she said. Miss Davison laughed, gave the pencil-case back to Gerard, and said, with a demure look-- “There! that’s my best accomplishment. I flatter myself I can pick pockets with any amateur living. Now you wouldn’t recommend me to take to that as a livelihood, would you?” He was amused, almost dismayed, but protested earnestly that there must be a hundred ways in which such exceeding dexterity could be profitably exercised without having recourse to the profession she suggested. But, in the meantime, Rose Aldington having drawn the attention of the rest of the people in the room to Rachel’s accomplishment, she was called upon to give another exhibition of her skill, and this she did in various ways, transferring trifles from the mantelpiece to the table and back again so quickly and cleverly that the eye could not follow her movements, and performing other little feats requiring extreme delicacy of touch and quickness of eye, until they all told her she would make her fortune if she were to set up as a conjurer. Gerard, however, was more deeply interested than the rest. He learned from her that she performed these various tricks without ever having been taught conjuring, and he argued from this that, if she were only to train her special faculties in some given direction, she could not fail to become exceedingly expert. “I should have thought,” he said, “that you would make a very clever milliner, with your wonderfully light touch.” Miss Davison sighed. “I believe I should,” she said; “but my mother won’t hear of it. Prejudice again! And I daresay that the talent which seems extraordinary when it is untrained, would turn out quite commonplace if I were to be pitted, at any calling such as millinery, against those who have for years been brought up to it.”