June was so keen, however, that he consented to be led like a lamb to the sacrifice. I heard from her how they went together to the old house which the spiritualist had left to his adopted daughter; and I heard what happened at the interview. June was vexed because Opal would see Robert alone. She had wanted to be in the room, and listen to everything! Opal was most ungrateful, June said, because she (June) had sent lots of people to have their "hands read," and get special jewels prescribed for them, like medicines. Robert had laughed to June about what Opal claimed to see for him in her crystal, but had pretended to forget most of the "silly stuff," and be unable to repeat it. June had worried, fearing lest misfortunes had appeared in the crystal, and that Robert wished to hide the fact from her.
"I'll get it all out of Opal myself!" she exclaimed to me, and took me with her to Miss Fawcett's next day.
The excuse for this visit was to have my hand "told," and to order a mascot for Robert, to take with him to the front: his own lucky jewel set in a design made to fit his horoscope!
I was delighted to go, for I'd never seen a fortune teller; but June was too eager to talk about Robert to spare me much time with the seeress. My hand-telling was rather perfunctory, for Miss Fawcett didn't feel the same need to see me alone which she had felt with Lorillard, and June was very much on the spot, sighing, fussing, and looking at her wrist-watch.
Opal was as reticent about the interview with Lorillard as Robert had been, though, unlike him, she didn't laugh. So poor June got little for her pains, and I learned nothing about my character that Grandmother hadn't told me when she was cross. Still, it was an experience. I'd never forgotten the tall, white, angular young woman wearing amethysts and a purple robe, in a purple room: a creature who looked as if she'd founded herself on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and overshot the mark. It seemed, also, that I'd never forgotten her secretary, though perhaps I'd not thought of the girl from that day to this.
"Do tell me how you happened to be with Opal Fawcett," I couldn't help blurting out from the depths of my curiosity. "You seem so—so—absolutely alien from her and her 'atmosphere'."
"Oh, it's quite simple," said Joyce Arnold, not betraying herself if she considered me intrusive or rude. "An aunt of mine—a dear old maid—was a great disciple of Mr. Fawcett. She thought Opal the wonder of the world, at about ten or twelve, as 'the child medium,' and she used to take me often to the house. I was five or six years younger than Opal, and Aunt Jenny hoped it would 'spiritualize' me to play with her. We never quite lost sight of each other after that, Opal and I. When she went into business—I mean, when she became a hand-reader and so on—I was beginning what I called my 'profession.' She engaged me as her secretary, and I stayed on till I left her to 'do my bit' in the war, as a V. A. D. That's the way I met Captain Lorillard, you know. It was the most splendid thing that ever happened, when he asked me to work for him after he was invalided back from the Front. You see, I was dead tired after four years without a rest. We'd had a lot of air raids at my hospital, and I suppose it was rather a strain. I was ordered home. And oh, it's been Paradise at that heavenly place on the river, helping to put down in black and white the beautiful thoughts of such a man!"
As she spoke, an expression of rapture, that was like light, illumined the girl's face for an instant, bright as a flash of sunshine on a white bird's wing. But it passed, and her eyes darkened with some quick memory of pain. She looked down, thick black lashes shadowing her cheeks.
"By Jove!" I thought. "There's a story here!"
Robert Lorillard wrote that Miss Arnold was "perfect." Yet he had sent her away. He said he was going away himself. But I felt sure he wasn't. Or else, he was going on purpose. He had searched the newspapers to find a place for her. If he hadn't done that deliberately, he would never have seen my advertisement.