a slight
American accent. "Your nerves seem to me to be vibrating."

"But isn't that usual?" said Felicity shyly. "I thought nerves always
did."

"Just hold the crystal in your hand for a minute or two. Thank you. Ah!
there's a slight cloud on your horizon at this moment, but it will pass
away--I see it passing away."

"What else do you see?"

"I see you in a large space surrounded by a hurrying crowd. There are
bookstalls, trucks of luggage, trains, I can't say precisely what it
is."

"Surely a railway station?" said Felicity.

"You are perfectly right. I should fancy from this that you are either
going to take a journey by rail, or that you are going to see a friend
off."

"Do you advise me to take the journey?"

"I fear advice one way or the other would have vurry little effect. I am
a believer in Fate. Either you're going to take that journey, or you're
not, in spite of anything I may suggest to the contrary."

And the palmist smiled archly, then leant back and closed her eyes.
Felicity wondered if she were tired with the noise of the railway
station. But she opened them suddenly, and took Felicity's hand, which
she looked at through the magnifying-glass.

"This is a most interesting hand. Mrs. Ogilvie's gentleman friend, who
was in here just now, also had a vurry interesting hand. She's a lovely
woman, and her hand is most interesting too...."

She paused.

"You have a curious temperament. You are easily impressed by the
personality of other people. You are impulsive and emotional, and yet
you have a remarkable amount of calm judgment, so that you can analyse,
and watch your own feelings and those of the other persons as well as if
it were a matter of indifference to you. Your strong affections never
blind you to the faults and weaknesses of their object, and those faults
do not make you care for them less, but in some cases attach you even
more strongly. You are fond of gaiety; your moods vary easily, because
you vibrate to music, bright surroundings, and sympathy. But you have
depth, and in an emergency I should say you could be capable even of
heroism. You have an astonishing amount of intuition."

"What a horrid little creature!" said Felicity.

"Your tact and knowledge of how to deal with people are so natural to
you that you are scarcely conscious of them. You should have been the
wife of a great diplomatist."

"But aren't they always very ugly?" asked Felicity.

"You're not as trivial a