n your
house! Oh! I could tell you if you would hear! I could warn you, if you
would be warned! But you will not! you will not!" she continued,
wringing her hands in great trouble.

"You shall predict my fate and Miriam's," said Marian, smiling, as she
opened the gate, and came out leading the child. "And I know," she
continued, holding out her palm, "that it will be such a fair fate, as
to brighten up your spirits for sympathy with it."

"No! I will not look at your hand!" cried Fanny, turning away. Then,
suddenly changing her mood, she snatched Marian's palm, and gazed upon
it long and intently; gradually her features became disturbed--dark
shadows seemed to sweep, as a funereal train, across her face--her bosom
heaved--she dropped the maiden's hand.

"Why, Fanny, you have told me nothing! What do you see in my future?"
asked Marian.

The maniac looked up, and breaking, as she sometimes did, into
improvisation, chanted, in the most mournful of tones, these words:

"Darkly, deadly, lowers the shadow,
Quickly, thickly, comes the crowd--
From death's bosom creeps the adder,
Trailing slime upon the shroud!"

Marian grew pale, so much, at the moment, was she infected with the
words and manner of this sybil; but then, "Nonsense!" she thought, and,
with a smile, roused herself to shake off the chill that was creeping
upon her.

"Feel! the air! the air!" said Fanny, lifting her hand.

"Yes, it is going to rain," said Edith. "Come in, dear Fanny."

But Fanny did not hear--the fitful, uncertain creature had seized the
hand of the child Miriam, and was gazing alternately upon the lines in
the palm and upon her fervid, eloquent face.

"What is this? Oh! what is this?" she said, sweeping the black tresses
back from her bending brow, and fastening her eyes upon Miriam's palm.
"What can it mean? A deep cross from the Mount of Venus crosses the line
of life, and forks into the line of death! a great sun in the plain of
Mars--a cloud in the vale of Mercury! and where the lines of life and
death meet, a sanguine spot and a great star! I cannot read it! In a
boy's hand, that would betoken a hero's career, and a glorious death in
a victorious field; but in a girl's! What can it mean when found in a
girl's? Stop!" And she peered into the hand for a few moments in deep
silence, and then her face lighted up, her eyes burned intensely, and
once more she broke forth in improvisation:

"Thou shalt be bless'd as maiden fair w