“You have spoken a very true thing now. If I had seen such a girl I should not tell you. And this has nothing to do with my own fortune. I have paid you to tell me something about my future—which you seem to know so well.”
This spurring phrase put the woman on her mettle. She flushed slowly under her dark skin.
“You are a heretic—you do not believe,” she said.
“I must be shown before I believe,” returned Laura, confidently.
“Then what comes to you in the future will only prove the case,” laughed the Gypsy queen. “You do not believe in palmistry,” and she tossed the hand from her lightly.
“Neither do you,” said Laura, bluntly. “You did not hold my hand then to enable you to read my palm, but for another purpose.”
“You are a shrewd lady,” said the Gypsy. “I read character in other ways than by palmistry—it is true.”
She looked at Laura for some seconds very earnestly. Of course, Mother Wit did not believe this Gypsy had any occult power; but her deep black eyes were wonderfully compelling, and it might be that there was something in “mind reading.”
“You have an intention now that, if followed to its conclusion, will bring you trouble, young lady. Just what that intention may be, or what trouble it may bring, I cannot say exactly,” declared the woman, slowly and impressively. “But it deals with a person you have never seen but once—I believe, recently. It seems that you may think you are helping her——”
“That is not prophesying,” said Laura, quickly, and interrupting the Gypsy queen. “I shall scarcely think your information worth what I have paid you if you do not do better than that.”