Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/238

210 the influence is that has been so strangely exercised over her by the chalchihuitl stone!"

The psychologist, after the last word, stood with sparkling eyes, and lips pressed together in a straight, defiant line.

"Iris tell! Iris!" Pierce excitedly exclaimed, when the door opened behind him, and his ward entered.

"Here is the form you asked me for, Richard," she said, handing her guardian a paper, and without showing the least curiosity as to what was going on between the two men, she went out again.

Pierce's eyes followed her with strange uneasiness and perplexity; then fell to the paper she had given him.

"It is the notice of the indefinite postponement of our wedding, Trant," he explained. "I must send it to the Chicago papers this afternoon, unless—unless—" he halted, dubiously.

"Unless the 'spell' on Miss Pierce can be broken by the means I have just spoken of?" Trant smiled slightly as he finished the sentence for him. "If I am not greatly mistaken, Dr. Pierce, your wedding will still take place. But as to this notice of its postponement, tell me, how long before last Wednesday, when this thing happened, was the earliest announcement of the wedding made in the papers?"

"I should say two weeks," Pierce replied in surprise.

"Do you happen to know, Dr. Pierce—you are, of course, well known in Central America—whether the announcement was copied in papers circulating there?"