‘Oh, yes, we have; leastways, I’ve often heard you preach. I knew a man once in the States, who was the very image of you. He’s dead now, he is.’
Her voice, with its strong foreign inflexion, rang so strangely and plaintively on the last words, that Bradley was startled. He looked at the girl more closely, and was struck by her unearthly beauty, contrasting so oddly with her matter-of-fact, offhand manner.
‘Your brother tells me that you are a sibyl,’ he said, drawing his chair nearer. ‘I am afraid, Miss Mapleleafe, you will find me a disturbing influence. I have about as much faith in solar biology, spiritualism, spirit-agency, or whatever you like to call it, as I have in—well, Mumbo-Jumbo.’
Her eyes still looked brightly into his, and her wan face was lit up with a curious smile.
‘That’s what they all say at first! Guess you think, then, that I’m an impostor? Don’t be afraid to speak your mind; I’m used to it; I’ve had worse than hard names thrown at me; stones and all that. I was stabbed once down South, and I’ve the mark still!’
As she spoke, she bared her white arm to the elbow, and showed, just in the fleshy part of the arm, the mark of an old scar.
‘The man that did that drew his knife in the dark, and pinioned my arm to the table. The very man that was like you.’
And lifting her arm to her lips she kissed the scar, and murmured, or crooned, to herself as she had done on the former occasion in the presence of her brother. Bradley looked on in amazement. So far as he could perceive at present, the woman was a half-mad creature, scarcely responsible for what she said or did.
His embarrassment was not lessened when Eustasia, still holding the arm to her lips, looked at him through thickly gathering tears, and then, as if starting from a trance, gave vent to a wild yet musical laugh.
Scarcely knowing what to say, he continued the former topic of conversation.