once knew, I made various
excuses; and the matter dropped. It was quite true that I had given up
reading hands. I avoided anything that might remind me of what was in
my own hands. And so, next morning, it was a great bore to me when,
soon after the train started, Mrs. Elbourn said it would be 'too cruel'
of me if I refused to do their hands now. Her daughter and Mrs. Brett
also said it would be 'brutal'; and they were all taking off their
gloves, and--well, of course I had to give in.

"I went to work methodically on Mrs. Elbourn's hands, in the usual way,
you know, first sketching the character from the backs of them; and
there was the usual hush, broken by the usual little noises--grunts of
assent from the husband, cooings of recognition from the daughter.
Presently I asked to see the palms, and from them I filled in the
details of Mrs. Elbourn's character before going on to the events in
her life. But while I talked I was calculating how old Mrs. Elbourn
might be. In my first glance at her palms I had seen that she could
not have been less than twenty-five when she married. The daughter was
seventeen. Suppose the daughter had been born a year later--how old
would the mother be? Forty-three, yes. Not less than that, poor
woman!"

Laider looked at me.

"Why 'poor woman!' you wonder? Well, in that first glance I had seen
other things than her marriage-line. I had seen a very complete break
in the lines of life and of fate. I had seen violent death there. At
what age? Not later, not possibly LATER, than forty-three. While I
talked to her about the things that had happened in her girlhood, the
back of my brain was hard at work on those marks of catastrophe. I was
horribly wondering that she was still alive. It was impossible that
between her and that catastrophe there could be more than a few short
months. And all the time I was talking; and I suppose I acquitted
myself well, for I remember that when I ceased I had a sort of ovation
from the Elbourns.

"It was a relief to turn to another pair of hands. Mrs. Brett was an
amusing young creature, and her hands were very characteristic, and
prettily odd in form. I allowed myself to be rather whimsical about
her nature, and having begun in that vein, I went on in it, somehow,
even after she had turned her palms. In those palms were reduplicated
the signs I had seen in Mrs. Elbourn's. It was as though they had been
copied neatly out. The only dif