A quarter of an hour later the Rolls had been safely bestowed at the brewery, and my companion and I were making our way amusedly past booths and tents and caravans, where chapmen, hucksters, drovers, cheapjacks, gipsies and bawling showmen wrangled and chaffered and cried their wares or entertainments, making with the crude music of the merry-go-rounds much the same good-humoured uproar which had been faithfully rendered at the village of Fallow Hill every September for the last five hundred years.
"Blessings on your sweet pretty face, my lady!" cried an old voice.
We turned to see a very old gipsy, seated a little apart upon a backless chair, nodding and smiling in our direction.
Adèle inclined her head, and I slid a hand into my pocket.
"Come hither to me, my lady," piped the old dame, "and let your man cross my old palm with silver, and I'll tell you your fortune. Ah, but you have a happy face."
Adèle looked at me, and I nodded.
"They're a good folk," I said, "and you'll get better stuff for your money than you would in Bond Street. But don't, if you don't want to."
My words could not have been heard by the gipsy. Yet, before Adèle could reply—
"Aye," she said, "the pretty gentleman's right. We're a good folk, and there be some among us can see farther than the dwellers in towns." Adèle started, and the crone laughed. "Come hither, my lady, and let me look in your eyes."
She was an old, old woman, but the snow-white hair that thrust from beneath her kerchief was not thin: her face was shrunken and wrinkled, yet apple-cheeked: and her great sloe-black eyes glowed with a strange brilliance, as if there were fires kindled deep in the wasted sockets.