away--"

There was a pause, and then, in a very different voice, Sylvia Bailey
asked the Comte de Virieu a question that seemed to him utterly
irrelevant.

"Do you believe in fortune-tellers?" she asked abruptly. "Are you
superstitious?"

"Like everyone else, I have been to such people," he answered
indifferently. "But if you ask my true opinion--well, no; I am quite
sceptical! There may be something in what these dealers in hope sometimes
say, but more often there is nothing. In fact, you must remember that a
witch generally tells her client what she believes her client wishes to
hear."

"Madame Wachner is inclined to think that Anna left Lacville because of
something which a fortune-teller told her--indeed told both of us--before
we came here." Mrs. Bailey was digging the point of her parasol in the
grass.

"Tiens! Tiens!" he exclaimed. "That is an odd idea! Pray tell me all
about it. Did you and your friend consult a fashionable necromancer, or
did you content yourselves with going to a cheap witch?"

"To quite a cheap witch."

Sylvia laughed happily; she was beginning to feel really better now. She
rather wondered that she had never told Count Paul about that strange
visit to the fortune-teller, but she had been taught, as are so many
Englishwomen of her type, to regard everything savouring of superstition
as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as rather discreditable.

"The woman called herself Madame Cagliostra," she went on gaily, "and she
only charged five francs. In the end we did pay her fifteen. But she gave
us plenty for our money, I assure you--in fact, I can't remember half the
things she said!"

"And to you was prophesied--?" Count Paul leant forward and looked at her
fixedly.

Sylvia blushed.

"Oh, she told me all sorts of things! As you say they don't really know
anything; they only guess. One of the things that she told me was that it
was possible, in fact, quite likely, that I should never go back to
England--I mean at all! And that if I did so, I should go as a stranger.
Wasn't that absurd?"

"Quite absurd," said Count Paul, quietly. "For even if you married again,
Madame; if you married a Frenchman, for instance, you would still wish to
go back to your own country sometimes--at least, I suppose so."

"Of course I should." And once more Sylvia reddened violently.

But this time Count Paul felt no pleasure in watching the flood of
carmine staining not only the smooth, rounded c