The Chink in the Armour | Page 5

staring at Madame Cagliostra with a serious
look.
"Very well," she exclaimed, in her rather indifferent French. "Very well!
We will both take the Grand Jeu at fifteen francs the two."
She turned and smiled at Sylvia. "It will be," she said, quaintly, and in
English, "my 'treat,' dear friend." And then, as Sylvia shook her head
decidedly--there were often these little contests of generosity between
the two women--she added rather sharply,
"Yes, yes! It shall be so. I insist! I see you do not believe in our
hostess's gift. There are, however, one or two questions I must ask, and
to which I fancy she can give me an answer. I am anxious, too, to hear

what she will say about you."
Sylvia smiled, and gave way.
Like most prosperous people who have not made the money they are
able to spend, Mrs. Bailey did not attach any undue importance to
wealth. But she knew that her friend was not as well off as herself, and
therefore she was always trying to pay a little more of her share than
was fair. Thanks to Madame Wolsky's stronger will, she very seldom
succeeded in doing so.
"We might at least ask her to open the window," she said rather
plaintively. It really was dreadfully stuffy!
Madame Cagliostra had gone to a sideboard from which she was taking
two packs of exceedingly dirty, queer-looking cards. They were the
famous Taro cards, but Sylvia did not know that.
When the fortune-teller was asked to open the window, she shook her
head decidedly.
"No, no!" she said. "It would dissipate the influences. I cannot do that!
On the contrary, the curtains should be drawn close, and if the ladies
will permit of it I will light my lamp."
Even as she spoke she was jerking the thick curtains closely together;
she even pinned them across so that no ray of the bright sunlight
outside could penetrate into the room.
For a few moments they were in complete darkness, and Sylvia felt a
queer, eerie sensation of fear, but this soon passed away as the
lamp--the "Suspension," as Madame Cagliostra proudly called it--was
lit.
When her lamp was well alight, the soothsayer drew three chairs up to
the round table, and motioned the two strangers to sit down.
"You will take my friend first," said Anna Wolsky, imperiously; and

then, to Sylvia, she said, in English, "Would you rather I went away,
dear? I could wait on the staircase till you were ready for me to come
back. It is not very pleasant to have one's fortune told when one is as
young and as pretty as you are, before other people."
"Of course I don't mind your being here!" cried Sylvia Bailey,
laughing--then, looking doubtfully at Madame Cagliostra, though it
was obvious the Frenchwoman did not understand English, "The truth
is that I should feel rather frightened if you were to leave me here all by
myself. So please stay."
Madame Cagliostra began dealing out the cards on the table. First
slowly, then quickly, she laid them out in a queer pattern; and as she
did so she muttered and murmured to herself. Then a frown came over
her face; she began to look disturbed, anxious, almost angry.
Sylvia, in spite of herself, grew interested and excited. She was sorry
she had not taken off her wedding-ring. In England the wise woman
always takes off her wedding-ring on going to see a fortune-teller. She
was also rather glad that she had left her pearls in the safe custody of M.
Girard. This little house in the Rue Jolie was a strange, lonely place.
Suddenly Madame Cagliostra began to speak in a quick, clear,
monotonous voice.
Keeping her eyes fixed on the cards, which now and again she touched
with a fat finger, and without looking at Sylvia, she said:
"Madame has led a very placid, quiet life. Her existence has been a
boat that has always lain in harbour--" She suddenly looked up: "I spent
my childhood at Dieppe, and that often suggests images to me," she
observed complacently, and then she went on in quite another tone of
voice:--
"To return to Madame and her fate! The boat has always been in
harbour, but now it is about to put out to sea. It will meet there another
craft. This other craft is, to Madame, a foreign craft, and I grieve to say
it, rather battered. But its timbers are sound, and that is well, for it

looks to me as if the sails of Madame's boat would mingle, at any rate
for a time with this battered craft."
"I don't understand what she means," said Sylvia, in a whisper. "Do ask
her to explain, Anna!"
"My friend asks you to drop metaphor," said the