Dorothy was in her own room, adjoining the kitchen, the door between them standing partly open. She had put down the grey stocking of her husband, which she had been mending, and sat in the firelight, doing nothing, save idly watching Phemie, who was preparing her tea in the kitchen, and wondering whether Aaron would be very late. For Aaron and the coachman had driven off to Nullington in the dog-cart, to despatch some matter of business for Miss Winter.
"Wasn't that a knock at the shrubbery-door, Phemie?" asked Dorothy, raising her voice.
"Well, I thought I heard something," replied Phemie, the only servant at the moment in the kitchen. "I'll see directly, ma'am. It's only Jem."
Before Phemie could finish buttering the muffin she had been toasting, the gentle knock was heard at the door a second time. Phemie ran along the short passage and opened it. Expecting to see only the gardener's boy, she started back in some alarm at sight of the strange figure confronting her. Standing between the two lights, one ruddy and homelike that streamed out of the kitchen doorway, the other pallid and ghastly that was dying slowly in the western sky, Phemie saw a tall and fierce-looking woman, tawny-skinned, and with bright black eyes. A scarlet kerchief was bound round the tangle of her black hair; a faded scarlet shawl was draped round her figure and knotted behind. Thick hoops of gold were in her ears; rings glittered on her yellow fingers. A gipsy fortune-teller without any doubt, as Phemie, after the first moment of surprise, at once felt assured. She had seen women attired somewhat like her in the country lanes round about. In her astonishment she did not speak. But the stranger did.
"Don't be afeard, honey. I am only an honest gipsy woman who has lost her way. I want to get to Nullington: being uncertain o' the road, I thought I'd make bold to turn aside here and ask it."
"The road's as straight as you can go," answered Phemie.
"Ah, but it's you that have a pair of wicked bright brown eyes, my lass," whispered the gipsy; "it's you that will make some fine young man's heart ache. Cross the poor gipsy's hand with a bit o' silver, and she'll tell you your fortune true and fair."
Phemie would have liked her fortune told very well indeed: but she glanced back in the direction of Mrs. Stone's parlour beyond the kitchen.
"I daren't do it," she whispered, and tried to shut the door.
By this time two or three of the other girls had come up, and were gathering round. There ensued some laughing and giggling.