“And so fate decided for you,” finished El-Râmi sedately. “And instead of admiring the pretty ladies without proper clothing at the Empire, you find yourself here, wondering why the deuce Hamlet the Dane could not find anything better to do than bother himself about his father’s ghost! Exactly! But, being here, you are here for a purpose, my friend;” and he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. “Look!--Over there--observe her well!--sits your future wife;” and he indicated, by the slightest possible nod, the American girl before alluded to. “Yes,--the pretty creature in pink, with dark hair. You don’t know her? No, of course you don’t--but you will. She will be introduced to you to-night before you leave this theatre. Don’t look so startled--there’s nothing miraculous about her, I assure you! She is merely Miss Chester, only daughter of Jabez Chester, the latest New York millionaire. A charmingly shallow, delightfully useless, but enormously wealthy little person!--you will propose to her within a month, and you will be accepted. A very good match for you, Vaughan--all your debts paid, and everything set straight with certain Jews. Nothing could be better, really--and, remember,--I am the first to congratulate you!” He spoke rapidly, with a smiling, easy air of conviction; his friend meanwhile stared at him in profound amazement and something of fear. “By Jove, El-Râmi!”--he began nervously--“you know, this is a little too much of a good thing. It’s all very well to play prophet sometimes, but it can be overdone.” “Pardon!” and El-Râmi turned to resume his seat. “The play begins again. Insufferably dull as Hamlet may be, we are bound to give him some slight measure of attention.” Vaughan forced a careless smile in response, and threw himself indolently back in his own stall, but he looked annoyed and puzzled. His eyes wandered from the back of El-Râmi’s white head to the half-seen profile of the American heiress who had just been so coolly and convincingly pointed out to him as his future wife. “I don’t know the girl from Adam,”--he thought irritably, “and I don’t want to know her. In fact, I won’t know her. And if I won’t, why, I sha’n’t know her. Will is everything, even according to El-Râmi. The fellow’s always so confoundedly positive of his prophecies. I should like to confute him for once and prove him wrong.” Thus he mused, scarcely heeding the progress of Shakespeare’s great tragedy, till, at the close of the scene of Ophelia’s burial, he saw El-Râmi rise and prepare to leave the auditorium. He at once rose himself. “Are you going?” he asked. “Yes;--I do not care for Hamlet’s end, or for anybody’s end in this particular play. I don’t like the hasty and wholesale slaughter that concludes the piece. It is inartistic.” “Shakespeare inartistic?” queried Vaughan, smiling.