Only a glimpse, yet it drove the blood from her cheeks and lips and made her catch her breath as one half suffocated. With all the will-power she possessed she strove to gaze again into the past. At first her efforts were in vain, but after a few seconds of quivering apprehension the crystal depths became cleared again. She could see waves rippling in the sunlight and up the shiny green supports of a pier, upon which two figures were seated side by side—a man and a girl.
Every detail was correct. Laline remembered the pink cotton frock, made with her own fingers, and the black lace hat and Suède gloves, Wallace's gifts, which she had worn so proudly. The man's head was lowered over the girl, whose left hand he held in his. But although Laline could not see his face she experienced a thrill of repulsion and terror at sight of his figure and thick curly black hair which showed under his straw hat.
Once again her memory brought back words from the past to complete the picture, and a man's voice, at sound of which her heart stood still with fear, slowly and impressively pronounced these words—
"This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape from him. His line of fate and yours run side by side and nothing but death can separate them!"
On the words the glass became clouded, the figures grew fainter and fainter until they vanished altogether, and Laline sat, trembling in every limb, with a new dread in her soul.
"It is the future and not the past which I must see," she told herself. "If I could only get sight of something to guide me!"
From the depths of the crystal the face of a man seemed to resolve itself, and brilliant bluish-gray eyes under heavy black eyebrows to fix themselves upon her. A faint cry rose to Laline's lips. She did not wish to see what the glass held; she would not believe her eyes. Every moment the face became clearer while her sentiment of loathing and detestation increased in proportion.
Moved out of herself by overmastering excitement, she would have flung the crystal from her; but at that exact moment the silence in the room was suddenly broken by the opening of the door and Susan's voice announcing—
"Mr. Wallace Armstrong!"