“You may be mistaken, Ketira. I know not what the signs you speak of can be: they may show themselves to you but to mislead; and nothing is more deceptive than the fancies of one’s imagination. Be it as it may, vengeance does not belong to us. Do not you put yourself forward to work young Stockhausen ill.”
“I work him ill!” retorted the gipsy. “You are mistaking me altogether. It is not I who shall work it. I only see it—and foretell it.”
“Nay, why speak so strangely, Ketira? It cannot be that you——”
“Abel Carew, talk not to me of matters that you do not understand,” she interrupted. “I know what I know. Things that I am able to see are hidden from you.”
He shook his head. “It is wrong to speak so of Hyde Stockhausen—or of any one. He may be as innocent in the matter as you or I.”
“But I tell you that he is not. And the conviction of it lies here”—striking herself fiercely on the breast.
Abel sighed, and began to put his dinner-plates together. He could not make any impression upon her, or on the notion she had taken up.
“Do you know what it is to have a breaking heart, Abel Carew?” she asked, her voice taking a softer tone that seemed to change it into a piteous wailing. “A broken heart one can bear; for all struggle is over, and one has but to put one’s head down on the green earth and die. But a breaking heart means continuous suffering; a perpetual torture that slowly saps away the life; a never-ending ache of soul and of spirit, than which nothing in this world can be so hard to battle with. And for twelve months now this anguish has been mine!”
Poor Ketira! Mistaken or not mistaken, there could be no question that her trouble was grievous to bear; the suspense, in which her days were passed, well-nigh unendurable.