第152页
'To be sure.'
I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which
she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned
it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to
the palm, and pored over it without touching it.
'It is too fine,' said she. 'I can make nothing of such a hand as
that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not
written there.'
'I believe you,' said I.
'No,' she continued, 'it is in the face: on the forehead, about the
eyes, in the eyes themselves, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and
lift up your head.'
'Ah! now you are coming to reality,' I said, as I obeyed her. 'I
shall begin to put some faith in you presently.'
I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that
a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however,
as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it
illumined.
'I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,' she said,
when she had examined me a while. 'I wonder what thoughts are busy
in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the
fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just
as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if
they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual
substance.'
'I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.'
'Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you
with whispers of the future?'
'Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my
earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by
myself.'
'A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that
window-seat (you see I know your habits)-'
'You have learned them from the servants.'
'Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak
truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole-'
I started to my feet when I heard the name.
'You have- have you?' thought I; 'there is diablerie in the
business after all, then!'
'Don't be alarmed,' continued the strange being; 'she's a safe hand
is Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her.
But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of
nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of
the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not
one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at
least curiosity?'
'I like to observe all the faces and all the figures.'
'But do you never single one from the rest-or it may be, two?'
'I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling
a tale: it amuses me to watch them.'
'What tale do you like best to hear?'
'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same
theme- courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe-