Page:Belloc Lowndes--The chink in the armour.djvu/32

22 this will not prevent your telling your friends of my powers. Allow me to assure you that it is not often that I am taken in this way!"

Her voice had dropped to a whisper. She was now gazing down at the pack of cards which lay on the table with a look of horror and oppression on her face.

"I will only charge five francs," she muttered at last, "for I know that I have not satisfied you."

Sylvia sprang to the window. She tore apart the curtains and pulled up the sash.

"No wonder the poor woman feels faint," she said quickly. "It's absurd to sit with a window tight shut in this kind of room, which is little more than a box with three people in it!"

Madame Cagliostra had sunk down into her chair again.

"I must beg you to go away, Mesdames," she muttered, faintly. "Five francs is all I ask of you."

But Anna Wolsky was behaving in what appeared to Sylvia a very strange manner. She walked round to where the fortune-teller was sitting.

"You saw something in the cards which you do not wish to tell me?" she said imperiously. "I do not mind being told the truth. I am not a child."

"I swear I saw nothing!" cried the Frenchwoman angrily. "I am too ill to see anything. The cards were to me perfectly blank!"

In the bright sunlight now pouring into the little room the soothsayer looked ghastly, her skin had turned a greenish white.

"Mesdames, I beg you to excuse me," she said again.