"There will be trouble and partings and evil wrought you by an enemy, until death severs a link and you are free."
Mrs. Vandeleur spoke slowly and oracularly on her last words; she dropped his hands, and, leaning back in her chair, passed her fingers wearily over her eyes.
"I am tired," she said. "But I foresee trouble before you, and I should like to warn you, for I take a great interest in you. Be very wary of your friends. False love and false friendship are Will-o'-the-wisps, to lead you to destruction. Now you must go. I have my work to attend to. But you must come and see me again often, very often, for I like you."
With an imperial graciousness she stretched out her hand, which Wallace lightly kissed, as he felt he was expected to do.
"I am really grateful for your kind forethought about my future," he said, "and I shall certainly come again."
He was not in the least superstitious, and Mrs. Vandeleur's pretensions to omniscience surprised and amused him; but he realised that she was at least sincere in her charlatanism, and that she believed in herself almost as much as she expected others to believe in her. Moreover, she had touched a sore and secret place in his heart in her rambling talk. No one knew better than he how the course of his life for the past few years had been overshadowed by an association of ill omen, so far as his own prospects were concerned, and Mrs. Vandeleur's intuition in this respect impressed him considerably.
Clare Cavan led him down the stairs and opened the street-door for him, looking strangely beautiful with the light from the ruby-coloured lamp in the hall falling on her shining hair and white face, and Wallace turned on the pavement to look back and bow again to her. But Miss Cavan had closed the door, not finding the north-east wind to her liking; and at the dining-room window, close pressed against the glass, watching his retreating figure, was the face of the secretary, Lina Grahame, wearing a look of unmistakable dislike and fear.
"That little old lady with the powdered hair is a witch!" Wallace said to himself, as he pursued his way. "I am already in love, and already in trouble over it."