MRS.

CARL WALRAVEN'S LITTLE GAME.
Mysterious Miriam, in her dismal garret lodging, was not the only person who read, and intelligently comprehended, these two very singular advertisements.
Of all the hundreds who may have perused and wondered over them, probably there were but four who understood in the least what was meant--the two most interested, and Miriam and Mrs.Walraven.
Stay! There was the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh, who might have seen his way through, had he chanced to read the "Personal" column of the paper.
On the Thursday morning that this last advertisement appeared, Mrs.Carl Walraven sat alone in the pretty boudoir sacred to her privacy.

It was her choice to breakfast alone sometimes, _en dishabille_.

It had been her choice on this particular day.
At her elbow stood the tiny round table, with its exquisite appointments of glass, and porcelain, and silver; its chocolate, its toast, its eggs, its little broiled bird.
Mrs.Walraven was of the luxurious sort, as your full-blown, high-blooded Cleopatras are likely to be, and did ample justice to the exquisite _cuisine_ of the Walraven mansion.
Lying back gracefully, her handsome morning robe falling loosely around her, her superb black hair twisted away in a careless, serpentine coil, her face fresh and blooming, "at peace with the world and all therein," my lady Blanche digested her breakfast and leisurely skimmed the morning paper.
She always liked the "Personals." To-day they had a double interest for her.

She read again and again--a dozen times, at least--that particular "Personal" appointing the meeting at Fourteenth Street, and a lazy smile came over her tropical face at last as she laid it down.
"Nothing could be better," mused Mrs.Walraven, with that indolent smile shining in her lazy, wicked black eyes.