e
lost without them. She had even caught herself wondering whether M.
Girard was perfectly honest, whether she could trust him not to have her
dear pearls changed by some clever jeweller, though, to be sure, she felt
she would have known her string of pearls anywhere!

* * * * *

But what was this that was going on between the other two?

Madame Cagliostra dealt out the pack of cards in a slow, deliberate
fashion--and then she uttered a kind of low hoarse cry, and mixed the
cards all together, hurriedly.

Getting up from the table, she exclaimed, "I regret, Madame, that I can
tell you nothing--nothing at all! I feel ill--very ill!" and, indeed, she
had turned, even to Sylvia's young and unobservant eyes, terribly pale.

For some moments the soothsayer stood staring into Anna Wolsky's
astonished face.

"I know I've disappointed you, Mesdames, but I hope 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. "If you do not wish
to give me the five francs, I will not exact any fee."

She pointed with a shaking finger to the door, and Sylvia put a
fiv