"There again I give you a carte blanche; say I am a benevolent fairy; you don't seem to like that? or your guardian-angel? nor that neither! Well, a witch if you please, or a ghost, or a fortune-teller—ay, that will do, a fortune-teller—so that is settled."
"Well, Madame, if I may not know either your name or occupation, will you be good enough at least to let me hear your business."
"Surely, my charming demoiselle; you should have heard it immediately had you not pestered me with so many childish questions. Well, then, about this Monsieur Le Prun?"
"Well, Madame?" said Lucille, not a little surprised.
"Well, my dear, I'm not going to tell you whether this Monsieur Le Prun is an angel, for angels they say have married women; or whether he is a Bluebeard—you have heard the story of Bluebeard, my little dear—but this I say, be he which he may, you must not marry him."
"And pray, who constrains my will?" exclaimed the girl, scornfully, but at the same time inwardly frightened.
"I do, my pretty pigeon; if you marry him, you do so forewarned, and if he don't punish you I will."
"How dare you speak in that tone to me?" said Lucille, to whose cheek the insolent threat of the stranger called a momentary flush of red; "you punish me, indeed, if he does not! I'll not permit you to address me so; besides I have help close by, if I please to call for it."
All this time the woman was laughing inwardly, and fumbling under her white robe, as if in search of something.
"I say he may be an angel, or he may be a bluebeard, I don't pretend to say which," she continued, with a perfectly genuine contempt of Lucille's vaunting, "but I have here an amulet that never fails in cases like this; it will detect and expel the devil better than blessed water, vera crux, or body of our Lord, for these things have sometimes failed, but this can never. With the aid of this you cannot be deceived. If he be a good man its influence will be ineffectual against him; but if, on the other hand, he be possessed of evil spirits, then test him with it, and you will behold him for a moment as he is."