I had not intended to go at once. I wanted to get home and think over this extraordinary commission more at my leisure. But, after all, it did not much matter. A hansom took me to Miss Norton’s dingy lodgings in Northumberland Street. The tow-coloured aunt received me in a dusty room and asked whether it was manicure or palmistry.
“Both,” I said.
“Miss Norton’s fee is one guinea, payable in advance, please. I will give you a receipt.” Then she faded out of the room, saying that Miss Norton would be down in a minute.
Miss Norton was down in a minute. She wore a theatrical tea-gown, had a certain amount of pinched prettiness in her face, and seemed to be a fairly hard case. I talked to her the whole time that she was polishing my nails. When it came to the other section of her weird business I asked her if she could tell me anything of the future.
“The law does not permit me to do that,” she said. “But I can tell you two things about the present which may rather surprise you.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“The first is,” she said, as she peered more closely into the lines of my hand, “that you have come here with the intention, sooner or later, of bribing me to give up the man to whom I am at present engaged. The second is, that you will have no success whatever in the attempt.” She broke off laughing. “I did not read that in your hand, of course. I saw you in Berkeley Square conversing earnestly with Mr. Wentworth Holding this morning. The rest was easy enough to guess. Charles told me I might expect something of the kind.”
I tried to keep my composure and my dignity, but I do not think I made a very fine figure. “Perhaps you will tell me,” I said quietly, “why you would refuse?”
“I will tell you, but you won’t believe it. Money has nothing whatever to do with the matter. If Mr. Charles Holding were a pauper it would be all the same to me. If it were necessary, I could earn enough by this nonsense to keep us both.”
“Well,” I said, “let us get on to something more interesting to me personally. Will you go on reading my hand, please?”