"No doubt. But what delightful humbug, nevertheless. Now, Cousin Stanny, it is your turn. He is looking at you all the time. He evidently finds you by far the most interesting member of the party. I am sure I have suffered by this absorbing interest, and that he has cut my fortune short in consequence."
"Very well, to please you, Muriel," replied de Güldenfeldt with a smile. "But pray don't run away with the notion that I for one instant believe in this nonsense. Alfred is right. It is all humbug from beginning to end. I sacrifice myself on the sole condition that your mother promises to be the next victim."
Mrs. Millward-Fraser smiled rather sadly and shook her head. "I live in the past, not in the future," she said, as de Güldenfeldt, folding up his long legs as best he could, squatted down in front of the little table, and prepared himself to be scrutinized.
This time, however, the Seer employed neither magnifying glass nor divining rods. He looked steadily at Stanislas for a few minutes with his penetrating black eyes. Then turning to the interpreter he spoke rapidly, in a low sing-song voice, charging his monologue with many ominous shakings of the head, and with dreary groans and sighs.
"Well, Ito, what does he say?" asked de Güldenfeldt, when the old man, ceasing to speak, leant his head on the table in a state of breathless exhaustion. The interpreter hesitated.
"Pardon me, your Excellency, but he says many bad, many false things. Do you wish me to repeat them?"
"Certainly," and de Güldenfeldt laughed rather uneasily, "let us hear everything. Keep nothing from me, false or true, good or bad."
"In what he says there is no good, no truth, Excellency. It is all bad, all false words. He says that you must hasten away up into the hills. He says the wind is rising, that it is already beginning to sing in the trees, and that there will be a great and terrible storm. The storm in the mountains will be a raging tempest, very, very dreadful and destructive. He says that one whom you love will be in the midst of it, at the mercy of the wind and of the waves, and what is worse, at the mercy of a man who is mad, of a man who hates you with a great and bitter hatred. You must go to her, Excellency, he says, if you ever wish to again see the honourable and gracious lady whom you love. Every moment is precious. There is not a minute to be lost, you must hasten--hasten. Soon it may be too late. For the wind is already beginning to sing drearily in the eaves of the house, and the raindrops are already overflowing from the cups of the lotus leaves."
And truly, as Ito spoke, a violent gust of wind shook the woodwork of the little house, and huge rain drops splashed into the lake outside.
Stanislas had turned pallid at Ito's interpretation of the old soothsayer's mumbled words. For, in spite of all his former professions of incredulity, it was impossible not to be strangely and alarmingly impressed at the unhappy forebodings contained in this ominous prophecy.