Above all, there was an alarming sense of uncertainty in everything.  She could hardly bring herself to believe that Brandon would really go to New Spain, and that she would actually lose him, although she did not want him, as yet; that is, as a prospective husband.  Flashes of all sorts of wild schemes had begun to shoot through her anger and grief when she stared in the face the prospect of her double separation from him—­her marriage to another, and the countless miles of fathomless sea that would be between them.  She could endure anything better than uncertainty.  A menacing future is the keenest of all tortures for any of us to bear, but especially for a girl like Mary.  Death itself is not so terrible as the fear of it.

Now about this time there lived over in Billingsgate Ward—­the worst part of London—­a Jewish soothsayer named Grouche.  He was also an astrologer, and had of late grown into great fame as prophet of the future—­a fortune-teller.

His fame rested on several remarkable predictions which had been fulfilled to the letter, and I really think the man had some wonderful powers.  They said he was half Jew, half gypsy, and, if there is alchemy in the mixing of blood, that combination should surely produce something peculiar.  The city folk were said to have visited him in great numbers, and, notwithstanding the priests and bishops all condemned him as an imp of Satan and a follower of witchcraft, many fine people, including some court ladies, continued to go there by stealth in order to take a dangerous, inquisitive peep into the future.  I say by stealth; because his ostensible occupation of soothsaying and fortune-telling was not his only business.  His house was really a place of illicit meeting, and the soothsaying was often but an excuse for going there.  Lacking this ostensible occupation, he would not have been allowed to keep his house within the wall, but would have been relegated to his proper place—­Bridge Ward Without.

Mary had long wanted to see this Grouche, at first out of mere curiosity; but Henry, who was very moral—­with other people’s consciences—­would not think of permitting it.  Two ladies, Lady Chesterfield and Lady Ormond, both good and virtuous women, had been detected in such a visit, and had been disgraced and expelled from court in the most cruel manner by order of the king himself.

Now, added to Mary’s old-time desire to see Grouche, came a longing to know the outcome of the present momentous complication of affairs that touched her so closely.

She could not wait for Time to unfold himself, and drop his budget of events as he traveled, but she must plunge ahead of him, and know, beforehand, the stores of the fates—­an intrusion they usually resent.  I need not tell you that was Mary’s only object in going, nor that her heart was as pure as a babe’s—­quite as chaste and almost as innocent.  It is equally true that the large proportion of persons who visited Grouche made his