"How you men gossip!" Mabel exclaimed, tingling upon the piano-stool, and laughing merrily. "I wasn't aware that we had been very long," I answered, sinking into a low armchair near her. "If so, I'm sure I apologise. The fact is, that Mr Hickman was explaining a new system of how to break the bank at Monte Carlo." "Oh, Mr Hickman!" she cried, turning at once to him. "Do explain it, and I'll try it when we go to the Riviera." "Mabel, my dear," exclaimed her mother, scandalised, "you'll do nothing of the kind. You know I don't approve of gambling." "Oh, I think it's awfully good fun," her daughter declared. "If you win," I added. "Of course," she added; then, turning again to Hickman, she induced him to explain his new and infallible system just as he had explained it to me. The trend of the conversation was, however, lost to me. My ears were closed to all sound, and now that I reflect I am surprised that I succeeded in retaining my self-possession. I know I sat there rigid, as one held motionless in terror; I only replied in monosyllables to any remark addressed to me, and I knew instinctively that the colour had left my countenance. The discovery was as bewildering as it was unexpected. Every detail of that handsome room was exactly as I had pictured it. The blind, with their keen sense of touch, are quick to form mental impressions of places and things, and the general character of this apartment I had riveted upon my mind with the fidelity of a photograph. The furniture was of gilt, just as I had detected from its smoothness, and covered with a rich brocade in wide stripes of art green and dull red-brown--an extremely handsome pattern; the carpet was dark, with a pile so thick that one's feet fell noiselessly; the three long windows, covered by heavy curtains of brocade to match the furniture, reached from the high-painted ceiling to the ground, exactly as I had found them in my blind gropings. About the room were two or three tables with glass tops, in trays beneath which were collections of choice _bric-a-brac_, including some wonderful Chinese carvings in ivory, while before the fireplace was spread the great tiger-skin, with paws and head preserved, which I so well remembered. I sat there speechless, breathless. Not a single detail was there wanting. Never before, in all my life, had amazement held me so absolutely dumbfounded. Close to where I saw was a spacious couch, over the centre of which was thrown an antimacassar of silken crochet-work. It was covered with the same brocade as the rest of the furniture, and I stretched forth my hand, with feigned carelessness and touched it. Its contact was the same, its shape exact; its position in the room identical.