“Astonishing!” said Jack, with mild sarcasm, while Frank continued to keep silent.
The woman turned on Merry.
“You are so still all at once! You suspect something—me? Ha! ha! ha! Because I wear this mask? Oh, no, no! Why, I can do that here. No one minds it. They know me. I tell them their fortunes. All have heard me. You want me to tell your fortune—yes?”
She leaned forward, seeming to peer more closely into Frank’s face.
“Your past is all written there,” she declared. “I see it plain. In America, though young, already you are famous. It is wonderful! No man as young as you has ever become so famous in America. You are known all over the land, and there all young men long to be like you.”
Frank smiled.
“I fear you are given to exaggeration and flattery,” he said.
She shook her head.
“I speak the truth as I read it. Is it not true?”
She turned in her appeal to Jack. The Virginian remembered how famous Frank had become in a short time, and he said: