fainting on the floor.

'I told you,' said Gerald. 'You don't know them as well as I do.'

After a little while Mary recovered from her swoon, but only to fall
into strong hysterics, in which she laughed and wept and raved and
cried, 'Keep him from me--from me, Joshua, my husband,' and many other
words of entreaty and of fear.

Joshua Considine was in a state of mind bordering on agony, and when
at last Mary became calm he knelt by her and kissed her feet and hands
and hair and called her all the sweet names and said all the tender
things his lips could frame. All that night he sat by her bedside and
held her hand. Far through the night and up to the early morning she
kept waking from sleep and crying out as if in fear, till she was
comforted by the consciousness that her husband was watching beside
her.

Breakfast was late the next morning, but during it Joshua received a
telegram which required him to drive over to Withering, nearly twenty
miles. He was loth to go; but Mary would not hear of his remaining,
and so before noon he drove off in his dog-cart alone.

When he was gone Mary retired to her room. She did not appear at
lunch, but when afternoon tea was served on the lawn under the great
weeping willow, she came to join her guest. She was looking quite
recovered from her illness of the evening before. After some casual
remarks, she said to Gerald: 'Of course it was very silly about last
night, but I could not help feeling frightened. Indeed I would feel so
still if I let myself think of it. But, after all these people may
only imagine things, and I have got a test that can hardly fail to
show that the prediction is false--if indeed it be false,' she added
sadly.

'What is your plan?' asked Gerald.

'I shall go myself to the gipsy camp, and have my fortune told by the
Queen.'

'Capital. May I go with you?'

'Oh, no! That would spoil it. She might know you and guess at me, and
suit her utterance accordingly. I shall go alone this afternoon.'

When the afternoon was gone Mary Considine took her way to the gipsy
encampment. Gerald went with her as far as the near edge of the
common, and returned alone.

Half-an-hour had hardly elapsed when Mary entered the drawing-room,
where he lay on a sofa reading. She was ghastly pale and was in a
state of extreme excitement. Hardly had she passed over the threshold
when she collapsed and sank moaning on the carpet. Gerald rushed to
aid her, but by a great effort