“True! Why, you told me nothing!” retorted Helen. “There was nothing in the fortune. You said there was nothing in the cards.”
“I remember it,” said Mother Ness; “remember it well. The cards showed no husband for you then, young lady; they might tell different now. But they showed some trouble about it, I recollect.”
Helen’s face fell. There had indeed been trouble. Trouble again and again. Richard Foliott, the false, had brought trouble to her; and so had Charles Leafchild, now lying in his grave at Worcester: not to speak of poor Slingsby Temple. Helen had got over all those crosses now, and was looking up again. She was of a nature to look up again from any evil that might befall her, short of losing her head off her shoulders. All dinner-time she had been flirting with Featherston’s nephew.
This suggestion of Mrs. Ness, “the cards might tell different now,” caught hold of her mind. Her colour slightly deepened, her eyes sparkled.
“Have you the cards with you now, Mrs. Ness?”
“Ay, to be sure, young lady. I never come away from home without my cards. They be in the cottage yonder.”
“Then I should like my fortune told again.”
“Oh, Helen, how can you be so silly!” cried Lady Whitney.
“Silly! Why, mamma, it is good fun. You go and fetch the cards, Mrs. Ness.”
“I and Johnny nearly had our fortune told to-day,” put in Bill, while Mrs. Ness stood where she was, hardly knowing what to be at. “We came upon a young gipsy woman in the wood, and she wanted to promise us a wife apiece. A little girl was with her that may have been stolen: she was too fair to be that brown woman’s child.”