“Oh, yes,” she returned.  “They will come at six.  We shall perhaps have our supper and sleep in this house to-night.  Then we will go away in the morning.”

“It is only a little after five now,” I told her.  “You frightened me at first.”

She cackled a laugh.  “I am nothing to be afraid of,” she chuckled.  “I am very old.  Besides, there is no harm in me.  If you have the time, I could tell your fortune.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t time,” I said, though I was tempted.  To have one’s fortune told in a cavern under a rock house where Romans had lived, told by a real, live gipsy who looked as if she might be a lineal descendant from Taven, and who was probably fresh from worshipping at the tomb of Sarah!  It would be an experience.  No girl I knew, not even Pam herself, who is always having adventures, could ever have had one as good as this.  If only I need not miss it!

“It would take no more than five minutes,” she pleaded in her queer French, which was barely understandable, and evidently not the tongue in which she was most at home.

“Well, then,” I said, hastily calculating that it was no more than ten minutes since Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel left me, and that the water for their punch couldn’t possibly have begun to boil yet.  “Well, then, perhaps I might have five minutes’ fortune, if it doesn’t cost too much; but I’m very poor—­poorer than you, maybe.”

“That cannot be, for then you would have less than nothing,” said the old woman, cackling again.  “But it is your company I like to have, more than your money.  I have been waiting here a long time, and I am dull.  No fortune can be expected to come true, however, unless the teller’s hand be crossed with silver, otherwise I might give it you for nothing.  But a two-franc piece—­”

“I think I have as much as that,” I cut her short, as she paused on the hint; and deciding not to ask her, as I felt inclined, to come to the upper room lest we should be interrupted, I went down the remaining five or six high steps, and got out my purse under a long, straight rod of gray light.

There were only a few francs left, but I would have beggared myself to buy this adventure, and thought it cheap at the price she named.  I found a two-franc piece—­a bright new one, worthy of its destiny—­and looking up as I shut my purse, I saw the old woman’s eyes fixed on me, and sharp as gimlets.  Used to the dusk now, I could see her dark face distinctly, and so like a hungry crow did she look that I was startled.  But it was only for a second that I felt a little uncomfortable.  She was so old and weak, I was so young and strong, that even if she were an evil creature who wanted to do me harm, I could shake her off and run away as easily as a bird could escape from a tied cat.

“Make a cross with the silver piece on my palm,” she said.

I did as she told me, and it was a dark and dirty palm, in the hollow of which seemed to lie a tiny pool of shadow.  Her eyes darted to the bracelet-watch as my wrist slipped out of the protecting sleeve, and I drew back my hand quickly.  She plucked the coin from my fingers, and then told me to give her my left hand.