"Would you mind telling me how I am to address you?" whispered King. They were leaning against the mud-plastered wall near the little window, side by side. The whimsical smile that every one loved to see was on his lips, in his eyes. "You see, I'm a stranger in a strange land. That accounts for my ignorance."
"You must not speak while she is gazing into the crystal," she warned, after a quick, searching glance at his face. He could have sworn that he saw a gleam of concern in her eyes, followed instantly by a twinkle that meant mischief.
"Please consider my plight," he implored. "I can't call you Aunt Loraine, you know."
She laughed silently and turned her head to devote her entire attention to the scene at the table. Truxton King was in a sudden state of trepidation. Had he offended her? There was a hot rush of blood to his ears. He missed the sly, wondering glance that she gave him out of the corner of her eye a moment later.
Although it was broad daylight, the low, stuffy room would have been pitch dark had it not been for the flickering candles on the table beside the bent, grey head of the mumbling fortune-teller, whose bony fingers twitched over and about the crystal globe like wiggling serpents' tails. The window gave little or no light and the door was closed, the grinning grandson leaning against it limply. The picture was a weird, uncanny one, despite the gay, lightsome appearance of the visitors. The old woman, in high, shrill tones, had commanded silence. The men obeyed with a grim scepticism, while the women seemed really awed by their surroundings.
The Witch began by reading the fortune of John Tullis, who had been pushed forward by the wide-eyed Prince. In a cackling monotone she rambled through a supposititious history of his past, for the chief part so unintelligible that even he could not gainsay the statements. Later, she bent her piercing eyes upon the Prince and refused to read his future, shrilly asserting that she had not the courage to tell what might befall the little ruler, all the while muttering something about the two little princes who had died in a tower ages and ages ago. Seeing that the boy was frightened, Tullis withdrew him to the background. The Countess Marlanx, who had returned that morning to Edelweiss as mysteriously as she had left, came next. She was smiling derisively.
"You have just returned from a visit to some one whom you hate," began the Witch. "He is your husband. You will marry again. There is a fair-haired man in love with you. You are in love with him. I can see trouble—"
But the Countess deliberately turned away from the table, her cheeks flaming with the consciousness that a smile had swept the circle behind her graceful back.
"Ridiculous," she said, and avoided John Tullis's gaze. "I don't care to hear any more. Come, Baron You are next."
Truxton King, subdued and troubled in his mind, found himself studying his surroundings and the people who went so far to make them interesting. He glanced from time to time at the delicate, eager profile of the girl beside him; at the soft, warm cheek and the caressing brown hair; at the little ear and the white slim neck of her—and realised just what had happened to him. He had fallen in love; that was the plain upshot of it. It had come to pass, just as he had hoped it would in his dearest dreams. He was face to face with the girl of royal blood that the story books had created for him long, long ago, and he was doing just what he had always intended to do: falling heels over head and hopelessly in love with her. Never had he seen hair grow so exquisitely about the temples and neck as this one's hair—but, just to confound his budding singleness of interest, his gaze at that instant wandered off and fell upon something that caused him to stare hard at a certain spot far removed from the coiffure of a fair and dainty lady.