MADAME NOVERI, reader of palms and cards, and dabbler in astrology, was an institution in the Ryder school.
The Misses Ryder did not wholly approve of her, but when Miss Lucilla felt qualms of conscience concerning traffic with the black arts, Miss Emmeline reminded her that Madame had been patronized by the Vanderhuysens, and the older sister, whose creed included a belief that the Four Hundred, like the King, can do no wrong, smoothed the wrinkles from her brow and her conscience.
"I suppose it would be foolish not to allow her to come occasionally. The young ladies like it, and she has promised not to tell them anything tragic," she said reluctantly.
So Madame Noveri came to the school once or twice a year, and she kept her word about the tragedy, but as for sentiment—little did the Misses Ryder know of the romances she evoked from rosy palms and greasy cards.
It was Amelia Bowers who suggested calling in the priestess of the occult to lighten the general gloom following the end of the Christmas holidays and a return to the Ryder fold.
"This is simply too dead slow for anything," groaned the fair Amelia. "Let's ask Miss Ryder if we may send for Madame Noveri. I'd like to see whether meeting George Pettingill at the New Year's dance did anything to the lines in my hand. Good gracious! I should think it would have made a perfect furrow."
The other girls seconded Amelia's motion, a deputation waited upon Miss Ryder, and, within an hour, the palmist was holding Amelia's hand in the little waiting-room to which the other seekers after knowledge were admitted, one by one.
Madame instantly detected the havoc wrought by young Pettingill; or, at least, as Amelia said afterward, "she didn't see his name, but she knew right away that there had been some one during the holidays." But it was for Cynthia Weston that Madame Noveri flung wide the gates of the future and revealed coming events of absorbing interest.
Cynthia enjoyed the enviable distinction of being the prettiest girl in the school, and disputed with Laura May Lee the honor of being the best dressed of the Ryder pupils. In addition she was a good student, she was amiable, and her manners were the admiration of the faculty. Taking all this into consideration, the fact that she was even more sentimental than the ever-gushing Amelia could not effectually dim her radiance. Moreover, her sentimentality was of a finer fibre than that of her chum. She did not fall in love with the lightning-change-artist celerity displayed by Amelia. Man dominated her horizon as well as that of her friend, but for her man was an abstraction, a transcendentally perfect being, who might come around any corner to meet her, and for whom she waited breathlessly. She read novels and dreamed of a hero. Amelia read the same novels and saw a hero in every man she met.
As it happened, for one reason or another, Cynthia had never consulted Madame Noveri, but the occult note appealed to her romantic side, and she needed only slight evidence to convince her that Madame was, as Amelia contended, "a wonder." The evidence was speedily forthcoming. Closeted with the fortune-teller, Cynthia heard an analysis of her own character and tastes, which owed its accuracy to skillful pumping of Amelia, but which impressed the listener profoundly.