He
had forced her to love him, and such maidens as Betty Ives when they
give love at last, give life itself. Dame Rachel glanced from one to
another, then she rose quickly, and from a dark corner of the room
produced a pack of cards. "Come, fair lady and noble gentleman," she
said, with a touch of the professional whine in her voice. "Will you
hear your fortunes? Cross the old gipsy's hand with silver, my pretty
dears, and you shall hear all the good things past, present, and future,
that may fall to your lot."

"Will you try?" said John Johnstone, bending forward.

The rosy colour rushed into Betty's cheek, the light shone in her eyes.

"I will try," she said, half laughing.

"Then all that is good we will believe, and all that is bad will cast to
the winds as false and untrue."

"Nothing can be bad in the future of faces like yours, dear hearts,"
said Rachel, rapidly shuffling the cards.

Some minutes passed, the gipsy busily and with growing discomfiture
turning the cards, trying them in every way--the two were silent.

Betty leant her head on her hand, shading her eyes from view, full of
shyness for the first time in her bold young life. John Johnstone gazed
on her with his soul in his eyes, and yet with a strange impatient
interest in the business that was going on.

Presently Rachel flung all the cards down with violence.

"I am losing the trick of the trade," she said, in a harsh, frightened
voice. "I am getting afraid of the cards, and when you are afraid of
them, they master you."

"Tut, tut!" said John kindly. "Do not blame yourself, good mother, if
they show not all the gilded coaches and six, and the lovely bride and
gay bridegroom you would fain have promised us."

"The combinations turn to evil--all evil. Pah! it is the old story. I
was afraid of the cards, and they have mastered me."

"Was there no warning conveyed in these strange combinations, Dame?"
asked Johnstone eagerly.

"I deal not in warnings," said Rachel hastily.

"Did I deal in warnings, the reading of the cards might prove useful to
you both."

"Come, come!" he said, "you speak in riddles. The warning. Is it the
same for this gentle lady as for my rough self?"

"Aye, aye, for both--both." She bent down, and laid a dark hand on the
shoulder of each, and peering into one face after another, she muttered:

"Beware of Wild Jack Barnstaple!"

Both started. John Johnstone flushed angrily: he rose to his feet.

"We have had