'What, you'd like to spoil my market, would you?' cried the sibyl, vindictively. 'No one was ever a penny the richer for your generosity, and no one will be a penny the worse off when you're dead and gone, except yourself. Let me tell your fortune, pretty gentleman,' she went on, laying a persuasive hand on James Penwyn's grey sleeve, and keeping up with the pedestrians as they strove to pass her. 'There's plenty of pleasant things the old gipsy woman can tell you. You're a gentleman that likes a dark blue eye, and there's an eye that looks kindly upon you now, and though there's crosses for true lovers, all will come out happy in the end, if you'll listen to the old gipsy.'
James laughed, and flung the prophetess a florin.
'Show me your hand, kind gentleman,' she urged, after a string of thanks and benedictions, 'your left hand. Yes, there's the mount of Venus, and not an ugly line across it, and you've a long thumb, my pretty gentleman, long between the first joint and the second—that means strength of will, for the thumb is Jupiter, and rules the house of life. Don't take your hand away, pretty gentleman. Let's see the line——'
'What's the matter, mother?' asked James, as the woman stopped in the middle of a sentence, still holding his hand and staring at the palm steadfastly with a scared look.
'What's that?' she asked, pointing to a short indented line across the palm.
'Why, what keen eyes you have, old lady! That's the mark of a hole I dug in my palm two years ago, cutting a tough bit of cavendish. My scout told me I was bound to have lockjaw, but I didn't realize his expectations. I suppose lockjaw doesn't run in our family.'
'Right across the line of life,' muttered the gipsy, still examining the seam left by the knife upon the pinkish, womanish palm.
'Does that mean anything bad—that I am to die young, for instance?'
'The scar of a knife can't overrule the planets,' replied the sibyl, sententiously.