“I might say it to almost any one:  but would it be true of almost any one?”

“In my circumstances.”

“Yes; just so, in your circumstances:  but find me another precisely placed as you are.”

“It would be easy to find you thousands.”

“You could scarcely find me one.  If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated:  very near happiness; yes, within reach of it.  The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them.  Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results.”

“I don’t understand enigmas.  I never could guess a riddle in my life.”

“If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.”

“And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?”

“To be sure.”

I gave her a shilling:  she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand.  I did.  She arched her face to the palm, and pored over it without touching it.

“It is too fine,” said she.  “I can make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines:  besides, what is in a palm?  Destiny is not written there.”

“I believe you,” said I.

“No,” she continued, “it is in the face:  on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the mouth.  Kneel, and lift up your head.”

“Ah! now you are coming to reality,” I said, as I obeyed her.  “I shall begin to put some faith in you presently.”

I knelt within half a yard of her.  She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal:  the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow:  mine, it illumined.

“I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,” she said, when she had examined me a while.  “I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern:  just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.”

“I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.”

“Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?”

“Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.”

“A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on:  and sitting in that window-seat (you see I know your habits ) —­ "

“You have learned them from the servants.”

“Ah! you think yourself sharp.  Well, perhaps I have:  to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole —­ "

I started to my feet when I heard the name.

“You have —­ have you?” thought I; “there is diablerie in the business after all, then!”