He turned from her, walked to the window, and kept his back to her while he spoke.
"You have no faith in fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers, and the like, have you, Olivia?"
"Most certainly not!"
"Then what I have to say will scarcely trouble you as it troubles me—for I believe; and the prediction of an astrologer has ruined my peace for the past month."
"Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse. My dear Sir Jasper, how can you be so simply credulous?"
"I knew you would laugh," said Sir Jasper, moodily; "I said so. But laugh if you can. I believe!"
"Was the prediction very terrible, then?" asked his wife, with a smile.
"Pray tell me all about it."
"It was terrible," her husband replied, sternly. "The living horror it has cast over me might have told you that. Listen, Olivia! On that night of our baby boy's birth, after I left you and came here, I stood by this window and saw a spectral face gleaming through the glass. It was the face of a man—a belated wayfarer—who adjured me, in the Savior's name, to let him in."
"Well, you let him in, I suppose?"
"I let him in—a strange-looking object, Olivia, like no creature I ever saw before, with flowing beard and hair silver-white—"