Nobody

"Oh, my dear!" the woman sighed with genuine regret: "I know already far more than I care to know!"

"But this-"

"Not now, I say. I've been too frequently and too long away from my guests as it is. I'll have to show myself for a little while. Then, come to my room in half an hour."

"At half past twelve?"

"Yes, and don't be late. Now do run along and have a good time."

The shutter was drawn gently to, and Sally, with an embittered smile for the unconscious irony of that parting injunction, moved slowly on toward the front of the house.

But it was true that she felt a little less disconsolate now than she had two minutes ago; after all, it seemed, she wasn't altogether friendless and forsaken; and as for those doubts and questions which so perplexed her, they would all be resolved and answered once she had opportunity to lay them, together with the story of last night, before the judgment of her benefactress..

Still, if she reckoned confidently upon her hostess, she reckoned not wisely without her host, whose mask to-night was that of a sardonic destiny. And when a tentative venture into the throngs on the veranda had been discouraged by the spirited advances of a forward young Cavalier who chose to consider his honour piqued, first by her demure Quaker garb, then by her unresponsiveness, Sally was glad enough to fall back upon the comparative quiet and solitude of the moon-drenched gardens. Whereupon her destiny grinned a heartless grin and arranged to throw her to the lions that, all unsuspected, raged in the maiden bosom of Mercedes Pride.

The tireless ingenuity with which that rampant spinster devised ways and means of rendering herself a peripatetic pest had long since won the ungrudged admiration of Sally, who elected to be amused more than annoyed by the impertinences, the pretentiousness, the fawning adulation and the corrosive jealousy of Mrs. Gosnold's licensed pick-thank. And when she had first divined the woman beneath the disguise of the witch Sally had wondered what new method of making a sprightly nuisance of herself Miss Pride had invented to go with her impersonation.

It proved, naturally enough, remembering the limitations of a New England maiden's imagination, to be compulsory fortune-telling with the aid of cards, a crystal ball, the palm of the victim's hand, unlimited effrontery, and a "den" rigged up in a corner of a hedge with a Navajo blanket for a canopy and for properties two wooden stools, a small folding table, a papier-mache skull, a jointed wooden snake, an artificial pumpkin-head with a candle in it, and a black cat tethered by a string to a stake in the ground and wishing he had never been born.

Within this noisome lair the sorceress squatted and practised her unholy arts upon all comers without mercy or distinction as to race, caste, sex, age, colour, or previous condition of servitude. And when trade slackened (as inevitably it did when "the young people" for whose "amusement" this mummery ostensibly was staged asserted their ennui by avoiding the neighbourhood) Ecstatica, nothing daunted, would rise up and go forth and stalk her prey among the more mature, dragging them off forcibly by the hand, when needs must, to sit at her table and sympathise with the unfortunate cat and humour her nonsense.

Thus she inveigled Sally when the latter unwarily wandered her way.

Miss Pride knew her victim perfectly, but for the sake of appearances kept up the semblance of mystification.

"Sit you there, my pretty," she grabbed vivaciously, two hands on Sally's shoulders urging her to rest on one of the stools. "Don't be afraid of my simple magic; the black art has nothing to do with the lore of the wise old woman. Just show me your rosy palm, and I will tell you your fortune. No, you needn't cross my palm with silver; I will ply my mystic trade and tell your future all for the sake of your pretty eyes."

She peered, blinking with make-believe myopia, into the hollow of Sally's hand.

"Ah, yes, yes!" she grunted, "you have an amiable and affectionate disposition; you love pretty things to wear and every sort of pleasure. There is your gravest fault and greatest danger, pretty: love of clothes and pleasure and-forgive the wise old woman's plain speaking-false ambitions. Beware of the sin of vain ambition; only wrong and unhappiness can come of that. No, no; don't draw your hand away. I have not finished. Let me look closer. There is much written here that you should know and none but my wise old eyes can read, pretty."

Effrontery battened on indulgence:

"The past has been unfortunate. The present is bright with misleading glamour-beware of the vanities of the flesh! The future-I see a shadow. It is dark. It is difficult to read. I see a journey before you-a long journey; you will cross water and travel by the steam-cars. And there is a lover waiting for you at the journey's end-not here, but far away. I cannot see him clearly, but he waits. Perhaps later, when I consult my magic sphere of crystal. But wait!"

She breathed hard for a moment, perhaps appreciating her temerity; but she was as little capable of reading Sally's character as her palm.

"I see danger in your path," she resumed in accents of awe; "the shadow of something evil-and a window barred with iron. I cannot say what this means, but you should know. Look into your heart, my pretty; think. If perhaps you have done something you should not have done, and if you would not suffer shame for it, you must make all haste to undo that which you have done-"

"Miss Pride!" Sally interrupted hotly, snatching her hand away. "You-"

"No, no. I have no name!" the other protested in the falsetto she had adopted to suit her impersonation; "I am only the wise old woman who tells the future and the past and reads the secrets."

But the white anger that glowed in Sally's countenance abashed her. The shrill tones trailed off into a mumble. She looked uneasily aside.

"You must not be angry with the poor old wise woman," she stammered uncertainly.

"You know very well what you have said," Sally told her in a low voice vibrant with indignation. "You know very well you have deliberately insulted me."

"No, no!"

"You know who I am and what your insinuation means, after what has happened here to-night. Miss Pride! Do you dare accuse me-?"

"Oh, no-please!" Mercedes begged, aghast, quaking in realisation of the enormity of her mistake. "I didn't think-I didn't know you-I didn't mean-"

"That," Sally cut in tensely, "is a deliberate falsehood. You inveigled me into this for the sole purpose of insulting me. Now I mean to have you repeat your accusation before witnesses. I shall inform Mrs. Gosnold-"

"Oh, no, Miss Manwaring! I beg of you, no! I didn't mean what you think, indeed I didn't!"

Sally made to speak, choked upon her indignation, and gulped.

"That's a lie!" she declared huskily; and rising fled the place.

She went a few hasty paces blindly, then remembering she mustn't make an exhibition of herself, however great the provocation, checked her steps and went on at a less conspicuous and precipitate rate.

But still her vision was dark with tears of rage and mortification, and still her bosom heaved convulsively. Now and again she stumbled.

Twice since nightfall the abominable accusation had been flung into her face, the unthinkable thing imputed to her, and this last time out of sheer, gratuitous spleen, the jealous spite of a mean-minded old maid. For Miss Pride had no such excuse as Adele Standish had for thinking Sally capable of infamy-unless indeed, Mrs. Standish had proved false to her pledge and had told people. But no; she'd never do that; not, at least, while the settlement of her insurance claim remained in abeyance.

The brutality of it!

A strong hand closing unceremoniously on her wrist brought Sally to a standstill within two paces of the low stone wall that guarded the brink of the cliff.

"Look where you're going, Miss; Manwaring!" Trego's voice counselled her quietly. Then, seeing that she yielded readily, he released her. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but in another minute if I hadn't taken the liberty of stopping you, you might have hurt yourself."

She managed to mutter an ungracious "Thank you."

"It's none of my business," Trego volunteered with some heat, "but I'd like to know what that vicious old vixen found to say to upset you this way."

"Oh, you were watching."

"No; I just happened to be sticking round when you flew out of that fool sideshow of hers like you were possessed. And then I saw you weren't paying much attention where you were going, and I was afraid. Hope you don't mind my butting in."

"Not at all," she gulped. "I suppose I ought to be grateful."

"That's just as you feel about it," he allowed reasonably.

She made an effort to collect herself. "But I am grateful," she asserted. "Please don't think I mean to be rude. Only," she gulped again, overcome by the stinging memory of that woman's insolence, "I'd almost as lief you hadn't stopped me-and that wall wasn't there!"

"Now, now!" he reminded her. "It can't be as bad as all that, you know."

"Well, but think how you would feel if you'd been twice accused of stealing Mrs. Gosnold's jewels last night!"

"Once would be plenty," he said gravely. "I don't reckon anybody would say that twice to my bare face."

"Yes-but you can resent insults like a man."

"That's right, too. But then it's the only way I know to resent 'em-with my fists. That's where you women put it all over us men; you know a hundred different ways of sinking the poisoned barb subtly. I wouldn't like to be that Pride critter when you get through with her."