“But I will not faint or make a fuss,” said Edna, looking pale and frightened. “I am not afraid.”
“No, you needn’t be,” said Lily, making an effort to throw off an uncomfortable feeling that the woman’s intense manner had given them all. “I don’t believe in fortune-telling any way.”
“But it is true. I have de power to see de future, to see de past too,” said the woman. “Shall I tell you all about your past life?”—this to Edna, who murmured an assent.
“Well, den, you haf live in fine house and had much fine dresses and jewels, and you haf lost a friend, and you haf lately had a letter.”
These shrewd guesses, based on the sight of Edna’s showy rings and very light mourning, seemed like very conclusive evidence that her father’s wealth and her grandmother’s death last year were entries in the book of fate that was open to the bold black eyes, and Edna became almost afraid to hear the dark prophecy that she was threatened with.
“’Tis a strange fate, very strange,” said the woman, again musing over the hand she held, but stealing an anxious glance at a little nickel watch that hung by her side.
“I will hear it,” said Edna, tragically, nerving herself for the worst.
“Nonsense,” said Lily, catching a glimpse of her ghastly, agitated face. “You are taking all this stuff in dead earnest, Edna, and it will make you sick. O, dear, I wish we hadn’t come! Mrs. Abbott will be so displeased! Come, girls, let’s go right home;” and she pulled out her pocket-book. “You shall have money for each of us, Madame Belotti, but I think we don’t want to hear any more solemn truths to-day.”
Edna, who was rather a nervous girl, was beginning to cry, and the others, frightened lest she should treat them to a fit of hysterics such as she had once in a thunder-storm, and make it difficult to get her home quietly, began to soothe her and try to coax her back to the gate. Madame seemed a little indifferent about the money Lily and Katie fumbled in their purses to collect. Suddenly Katie exclaimed:
“Elfie! Why, where is the child?”