By this time Lady Lucy and Anne were prepared to believe any nonsense the gipsy chose to tell them.
And Lucy whispered, "Ask her about the thimble."
"My lady has lost—" began Anne.
But the woman cut her short. "I know; I know. She has lost a thimble. And, if she wants to find it, let her come to-morrow to the spring by the brook, and bring something which has lain by the thimble,—something of silver if it was silver, and of gold if it was gold,—and she shall know all she desires. But let her beware how she deceives or trifles with the gipsy-woman, lest she rue the day she saw me under the hawthorn tree."
Terrified by this threat, all the more alarming from its mystery, and by the frown and glance of the old woman, Lucy tremblingly promised all she required.
"Must it be something out of the same box?" she asked.
"Yes, out of the same box. Don't fail to let it be of the same metal, or it will do no good. Now, young woman, let me see your hand."
The gipsy told Anne a fine fortune, and sent her off greatly pleased. Lucy, however, was not so well satisfied. She knew instinctively that Cousin Deborah would never let her go to meet the gipsy-woman, and that she must do so by stealth, if at all. Here was a new labyrinth of deceit opening upon her.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!"
These lines were not written in Lady Lucy's day, or she might have remembered them. She had made a resolution that she would never tell another lie; but what was to become of that resolution now? And what was it but stealing, if she took something else out of the box? But, then, if she did not? Lucy shuddered. She was timid by nature, and still more by education; and the thought of the gipsy's threats made her tremble and turn cold.