If I had not been attracted by the strong personality of the speaker I should have been favorably impressed with the sincerity of her tone. She was pale, very pale; her eyes were large and brown. As she spoke she gazed on me with the languid expression so in keeping with one of great volume of earnestness. Her nose was thin; I might say drawn and pinched; her lips as red as cherries, parted slightly as the soft words left them, showing a mouth full of regular, well-kept teeth. The forehead was not higher than the ordinary, but it made a fitting support for the crown of dark brown hair, which was artistically dressed in a manner to form a frame about the face, which seemingly did not end at the chin, as most faces do, but it was possessed of a broadness and deepness of nature which illumined the pallid cheeks on either side back as far as the little, thin ears. She was not large, neither could she be considered under size, not altogether on account of her stature, which might have seemed diminutive to the eye in search of physical development, but rather because the intelligence which this creature possessed seemed to reach out and permeate every nook and corner of the lavishly furnished parlor. “I thank you for your kindly allusion and feel that if I have been the cause of good that there must have been some good enveloped in the subjects with which I had to deal during my professional career. In pursuance of the fact that good may come from good, I have retired from the secret service business and am now preparing a work which will be largely based upon the experience of former days. I find it necessary for me to glean from others some of the facts of their lives in order that I may not digress from the truth and that the twenty stories that will compose my book may be hinged upon different modes of existence, hence my call upon you to-day. “I well remember the last words you uttered when I left you in a convalescent condition in the hospital: ‘If I can ever serve you, command me.’ I am not here to command you, but to ask you for your life’s story.” “And did you know, Mr. Spencer, that if you are put in possession of the facts as they exist, that you will have something which the world knows nothing of?” “I trust, however, that you will place in me the confidence of your history.” “But what time in life do you desire that I begin?” “I want you to tell me how you happened to come to Chicago before I ever met you.” At this request the woman seemed to draw herself together and with a movement of her figure that impressed me as a straightening out process, she began by saying: