I wish I were not obliged to parry social invitations just at present. The excellent Visconti who had asked me to dinner two or three times during the winter, has suddenly taken a notion to ask me at least once every week. I hope I am not grown so churlish but that I appreciate his well-meant courtesy. But the fag is too great. He has a house in Thirteenth Street neighboring on St. Vincent’s Hospital, and he also has a motherless daughter, Gina, abounding in vitality, who must be amused. The proximity to the hospital, he intimates, the smell of carbolate and iodoform, depress young blood, and Gina, being super-American, must not be allowed to remember that there is anything unpleasant in life. I trust I am not the only vessel chosen to bring more lively spirits to that girl. The effort for me is immense. I go to Crestlands after office hours, dress, return to town, and then make a late train for Crestlands again. The food is excellent and Gina sings prettily in a soprano as rich as her coloring. But the next morning Visconti’s does not enjoy the fruit of my undimmed energies. More recently, Visconti has urged me not to dress and in that I see the fine hand of Gina at work. As an American-born girl, Gina is quick and eager to read the signs and weather indications. And though I am becoming dexterous in excuses, I dined at the Visconti’s last night nevertheless. Gina sang the _Sole mio_ and _Una voce poco fa_ and even told my fortune in cards, predicting that I should "be married a second time." "But never a first time?" I queried simply. "Oh, then you’ve never been married at all!" Gina exulted, and she energetically read the cards for me afresh. Her sortilege evidently is not a perfect science. But it occurs to me that by means of it the clever Gina found out more about my personal life than ever I had vouchsafed to her in all our acquaintance. When I returned home I found Alicia in my study sitting late over the catalogue, a copy of which she is now completing. She jumped from her chair. "Oh, I am so glad you’ve come, Uncle Ranny," she clapped her hands joyously. "I have found something we have overlooked." "What is it, Alicia?" And my gaze was, I admit, fascinated by her flushed cheeks and starlike eyes sparkling with excitement. She seemed the Muse incarnating those books, the very spirit of beauty they enshrine. And yet she is not quite sixteen. "It’s Shelley’s ’Alastor’!" she cried. "And it’s so thin that it had slipped in between the covers of another book. It’s a first edition—1816, isn’t it?" "Yes, Alicia. And a very beautiful poem besides." "Oh, isn’t it!" she cried in exultation. "I have read it all, Uncle Ranny, and do you know what I found out?"—and her voice became more solemn—"it is your life Shelley was writing!" I laughed uproariously.