She had returned to Washington several weeks before, and it was now the middle of August. On consulting the papers she selected from the advertisements one in a very obscure locality, and made her way thither without delay. The mind-reader and clairvoyant, as she called herself, was located on a dirty little street in a villainous-looking tobacco shop. When Hetty entered, the slovenly-looking old woman was serving a customer with cigars, and the maid was startled to find in her the same woman to whom she had once advised Ethel to apply.
"I want my fortune told," she said in an undertone to the woman.
"Come into the back room, then, and I'll send my son to wait on the shop."
With her pretty nose in the air, at the vile odors of the place, the smart maid followed into the back room, where a slovenly man with long hair and full whiskers was making some drawings at a little table.
"You must wait on the shop while I tell the young lady's fortune," the woman said to him, and he rose with a muttered word of impatience.
Hetty was not the least interested in the gruff man, and she scarcely knew why she cast a searching glance upon him.
But when she looked at him she met a glance of startled recognition that made her foolish heart leap with wild excitement. The next moment she clutched his arm, crying sobbingly:
"Oh, Watson, Watson, so I've found you at last!"
"The devil!" cried Lindsey Warwick, trying to shake her off, for his first impulse was to snatch his hat and run.
But Hetty clasped his neck with both arms, and clung to him like a wild-cat, despite his struggles.