"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.
"Yes, he did!" flashed Alicia. "Only your life is so much better. He was so absorbed in himself, Alastor, that he died in his loneliness. And you—you are simply surrounded by people who love you. You—!"