She had gone from him gayly, happily, with laughter on her lips and
roses on her cheeks; but presently she staggered forth, pale and
changed, her face as white as her lilies, and the tears hanging on her
lashes like pearls in the moonlight.

"The old gypsy has frightened her with her promise of a drunken and lazy
husband!" cried the merry girls.

"Did she promise you a rich and loving husband?" cried Love, hanging
eagerly over the pale, trembling girl.

She faltered a despairing negative; and one of the girls exclaimed,
curiously:

"Do tell us what she said, Miss Chase! It can not possibly be worse than
what she promised us!"

"Yes, tell us all about it, so that we can laugh at it together!" added
Love solicitously, seeing how unnerved she was, anxious to turn it all
into a joke.

Dainty leaned heavily on her lover, as though scarcely able to stand,
and her eyes turned mournfully to his while she faltered, fearfully:

"Oh, I shall never forget how balefully her black eyes burned on me
through the holes in her mask, as if she hated me, and what cruel glee
rang in her voice as she hissed in my ear: 'You do well to choose lilies
for your adorning, for they are funeral flowers, and you will soon be
the bride of Death!'"

And with those faltered words, the frightened girl dropped like a broken
flower and hung fainting on her lover's arm.

Instantly there was a great commotion, the girls rushing hither and
thither for restoratives, so that Dainty soon sighed and opened her
blue eyes in pathetic wonder.

"Love," she murmured, weakly; and one of the girls said, pityingly:

"There, dear; don't worry. Mr. Ellsworth has gone into the tent to scold
the old fortune-teller for telling you such wicked falsehoods."

"Just as she told all of us," added another. "Why, I never saw such a
spiteful old hag in my life, promising me a drunken, abusive husband,
when I am engaged to the dearest fellow in the world!"

Dainty suffered them to soothe her by making light of the gypsy's
predictions, while she waited uneasily for her lover's return.

Love had indeed rushed away in bitter wrath to upbraid the grewsome
fortune-teller; but on entering the tent, whose darkened interior and
somber arrangement framed the black-gowned outlines of a tall, masked
woman, he recoiled momentarily in something like awe.

"Advance, mortal!" intoned a deep, sepulchral voice: "advance, cross my
palm with silver, and hear the sentence of the stars t