“Shall I tell the gentleman’s hand?” she asked, stretching out her withered claw to take it.
But he drew it away hurriedly.
“No, no,” he said, attempting to speak lightly. “This lady’s fortune isn’t sufficiently encouraging for me to venture.”
The gipsy’s eyes never left his face. She nodded slowly.
“That’s as may be. For tez the zaim luck and zaim ill-lack will come to yu as comes to thikke maid. There’s no ring given or taken, but you’m bound together so fast and firm as weddin’-ring could bind ’ee.”
Jean felt her face flame scarlet in the dusk of the tiny room, and she turned and made her way hastily out into the sunshine once more, thankful for the eager queries of Nick and Claire, which served to bring back to normal the rather strained atmosphere induced by the gipsy’s final comment.
As they climbed the side of the tor once more, Jean relapsed into silence. More than once, more than twice, since she had come to England, she had been vaguely conscious of some hidden menace to her happiness, and now the gipsy had suddenly given words to’ her own indefinite premonition of evil.
“For there’s darkness comin’... black darkness.”
It was a relief to join the rest of the picnic party, who were clamouring loudly for their lunch, good-humouredly indignant with the wanderers for keeping them waiting.