Truxton King

The Witch began by reading the fortune of John Tullis, who had been pushed forward by the wide-eyed Prince. In a cackling monotone she rambled through a supposititious history of his past, for the chief part so unintelligible that even he could not gainsay the statements. Later, she bent her piercing eyes upon the Prince and refused to read his future, shrilly asserting that she had not the courage to tell what might befall the little ruler, all the while muttering something about the two little princes who had died in a tower ages and ages ago. Seeing that the boy was frightened, Tullis withdrew him to the background. The Countess Marlanx, who had returned that morning to Edelweiss as mysteriously as she had left, came next. She was smiling derisively.

"You have just returned from a visit to some one whom you hate," began the Witch. "He is your husband. You will marry again. There is a fair-haired man in love with you. You are in love with him. I can see trouble--"

But the Countess deliberately turned away from the table, her cheeks flaming with the consciousness that a smile had swept the circle behind her graceful back.

"Ridiculous," she said, and avoided John Tullis's gaze. "I don't care to hear any more. Come, Baron You are next."

Truxton King, subdued and troubled in his mind, found himself studying his surroundings and the people who went so far to make them interesting. He glanced from time to time at the delicate, eager profile of the girl beside him; at the soft, warm cheek and the caressing brown hair; at the little ear and the white slim neck of her--and realised just what had happened to him. He had fallen in love; that was the plain upshot of it. It had come to pass, just as he had hoped it would in his dearest dreams. He was face to face with the girl of royal blood that the story books had created for him long, long ago, and he was doing just what he had always intended to do: falling heels over head and hopelessly in love with her. Never had he seen hair grow so exquisitely about the temples and neck as this one's hair--but, just to confound his budding singleness of interest, his gaze at that instant wandered off and fell upon something that caused him to stare hard at a certain spot far removed from the coiffure of a fair and dainty lady.

His eye had fallen upon a crack in the door that led to the kitchen, although he had no means of knowing that it was a kitchen. To his amazement, a gleaming eye was looking out upon the room from beyond this narrow crack. He looked long and found that he was not mistaken. There was an eye, glued close to the opposite side of the rickety door, and its gaze was directed to the Countess Marlanx.