Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/187

Rh 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