As there seemed no hope of finding the lady they sought until the crowd should have thinned a little, Jack laughed and entered the silver-spangled tent. The seeress was gowned in white, with silver chains and bracelets and girdle, and a long white veil completely enveloped her except the face, and this was concealed by her yashmak up to her mocking gray eyes, with their dark, level brows. There was something in her eyes that attracted Jack, and made him believe in her uncanny powers quite against his will, and even while he told himself that this was but the foolishness of the hour. He gave her the necessary data, and she consulted her charts, and gave him a rapid and wonderfully correct delineation of his character, "a nature which combines the characteristics of Scorpio with some of those of Sagitarrius, as is the case," she explained gravely, "with persons born near the cusp," a term which produced no impression upon his mind, though he said, "Oh, indeed," politely. She made some cabalistic marks on a square of paper and turned to him with a somewhat startled expression, which faded at once, and the mocking eyes looked full into his as she went on.
"You do not believe in anything I am telling you, and therefore I shall speak quite frankly, certain that you will be neither cast down nor elated by anything I can say. I think you are a physician; if not you ought to be; you seem to have come from afar, and to be about to begin a new phase in your life. It is well that you have two of the greatest of the planets, Mars and Jupiter, as controlling influences, for you will need them, and that very soon. You are at this moment in greater danger than ever before has been your lot."
Jack could not repress a laugh. With youth, health, ability and love he felt that it would take more than a stray comet to turn the currents of his life awry. But the woman did not smile; he could see that much through the gauzy yashmak, and her eyes grew grave and her forehead contracted.
"I am glad you don't believe it," she said, "because I should not like to tell you what I see if you did; before morning you will know whether it is all the foolishness you think it."
He apologized. "I'm immensely interested," he said, "but I didn't know any one regarded this sort of thing seriously. So far as you've gone you've hit me off very well, and I don't mind telling you that I am a physician, and I'm just back from the far East."
"Thank you," she said gravely. "Have you ever heard that if a man has made love to a girl under the constellation of Cassiopeia he should not marry until he has also made love under the Southern Cross? There is a conjunction of malign planets at this time; they threaten your happiness through love, through hate, through accident. If you have become interested in any person born under Saturn, that is between the twenty-first of December and the twentieth of January, particularly about the seventh of January, you should certainly take time to consider carefully, for there is nothing but wretchedness and misunderstanding in such an alliance; there may be much that is attractive on the surface, but you will find a complete lack of harmony, of similarity of tastes and ambition that would leave you forever alone, and there is much selfishness and stubborness of will. Saturn and Scorpio are not good marital allies." He gave her a searching glance, for the seventh of January was Leonora's birthday, but her face was quite inscrutable.
"There is something here I do not understand; this accident does not happen to you, nor to any one near you, yet it has a lasting and a terrible effect upon your life——" she shuddered and pushed the charts away from her. "I will not tell you any more," she said, "but I wonder whether you would do me the favor of giving me your name and address. I want to cast your horoscope carefully, and I will send you the chart."
He thanked her and wrote down his name as requested, somewhat impressed in spite of himself. As he rose to go she stood also and lifted her hand as if she would have drawn him back, then let it drop heavily. If it was a piece of acting, he told himself it was perfectly done. "Do be careful for the next twenty-four hours," she said, "and beware of the evil that may come out of good."
That last Delphic utterance stamped the whole affair as a clever piece of mind-reading, guesswork and acting, and, somewhat annoyed that he should have been hoaxed even for a moment, Jack withdrew.
The hour was growing late and the crowd dispersing when they turned from the fortune-telling booths and entered the ballroom, and presently Jack said to his sister, "There she is; the one in the green gown."