"It is written," answered the old woman, sharply. "Do you think to alter the decrees of fate with your idle words, proud girl? No, no; there will be a stain on the whiteness of your life that your tears can never wash out. Love and hate will brand it there. You will be a young man's bride, but an old man's darling."
She paused, and a faint smile dimpled the young girl's cheek. Apparently the latter prediction did not seem to overwhelm her as the witch expected.
"I have been an old man's darling all my life," she said gently. "I assure you it is very pleasant."
"Girl, I meant not the tie of consanguinity," cried the sibyl, sharply. "You do not understand. Ah! you will know soon enough; for I tell you, girl, a cloud is gathering over your head; gathering swiftly to burst over you in a tempest of fury. Fly! Fly! Go and cast yourself into those raging Atlantic waves yonder, rather than breast the torrent of sorrow about to break upon your life!"
Her voice had risen almost to a pitch of fury with the last words, and her eyes flashed as with the light of inspiration. She cast a strange look upon the trembling girl, and, dropping her hand abruptly, turned away, hobbling out of sight with a rapidity that scarcely seemed possible in one so stricken with age.
The young girl, who a moment ago had seemed so blithe and debonair, sat still a few moments where the sibyl had left her, looking curiously into the pink palm from which such dire prophecies had been read. She looked like one dazed, and a slight pallor had momentarily usurped the rose tint on her cheek.
"How earnestly the old creature talked," she murmured, musingly, "as if that horrid jargon of hers could be true. What is there in my hand but a few lines that mean nothing? She saw that I did not believe in her art, and predicted those dreadful things merely to punish me for my doubt. Heigho! I have never had a sorrow in my life and never expect to have one."
She drew on her glove, and taking up her volume of poems, pursued her way along the shore, looking a little more thoughtful than when she had tripped that way a little while before singing in the lightness of her heart.
After walking a short distance she paused, and selecting a shady seat, sat down where she could watch the blue waves of the ocean rolling in, crested with snowy foam, and the wild flight of the sea-birds wheeling in the sunny air, and darting down now and then for some object of prey their keen eyes discerned in the water. After watching these objects for awhile she grew weary, and, opening her book, began to read fitfully, turning the pages at random, as if only half her heart was in the task.
She had been reading perhaps half an hour when the light dip of oars in the water saluted her ears. She looked up quickly and saw a fairy little skiff with one occupant coming around a curve of the shore toward her. The skiff was very dainty, with trimly cushioned seats. It was painted in shining blue and white, and bore around about the prow in letters of blue and gold, the fanciful name, "Bonnibel." The single occupant, a young man singularly handsome and resolute-looking, called out as he neared the shore: