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Madame Cagliostra gave a shrewd, measuring glance at the two young women standing before her. She was wondering how much they were good for. "No doubt you have been told," she said suddenly, "that my fee is five francs. But if you require the Grand Jeu it will be ten francs. Come, ladies, make up your minds; I will give you both the Grand Jeu for fifteen francs!"
And for awhile you do not know what it means, for love has never yet touched you with his red-hot finger." "How absurd!" thought Sylvia to herself. "She actually takes me for a young girl! What ridiculous mistakes fortune-tellers do make, to be sure!" " But you cannot escape love," went on Madame Cagliostra, eagerly.
"It's absurd to sit with a window tight shut in this kind of room, which is little more than a box with three people in it!" Madame Cagliostra had sunk down into her chair again. "I must beg you to go away, Mesdames," she muttered, faintly. "Five francs is all I ask of you." But Anna Wolsky was behaving in what appeared to Sylvia a very strange manner.
Yet it was really very strange that Madame Cagliostra had known, or rather had divined, that she possessed a necklace by which she laid great store. But wasn't there such a thing as telepathy? Isn't it supposed by some people that fortune-tellers simply see into the minds of those who come to them, and then arrange what they see there according to their fancy?
And I add that I hope with all my heart that you will live to go back to your own country, Madame!" Sylvia felt a vague, uneasy feeling of oppression, almost of fear, steal over her. It seemed to her that Madame Cagliostra was looking at her with puzzled, pitying eyes. The soothsayer again put a fat and not too clean finger down on the upturned face of a card.
Where is the use of wearing them on such an expedition as that to a fortune-teller?" "But why shouldn't I wear them?" asked Sylvia, rather surprised. "Well, in your place I should certainly leave anything as valuable as your pearls in safe keeping. After all, we know nothing of this Madame Cagliostra, and Montmartre is what Parisians call an eccentric quarter."
She rather wondered that she had never told Count Paul about that strange visit to the fortune-teller, but she had been taught, as are so many Englishwomen of her type, to regard everything savouring of superstition as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as rather discreditable. "The woman called herself Madame Cagliostra," she went on gaily, "and she only charged five francs.
"It is your life!" "My life?" echoed Anna. "I do not know that I value my life as much as you think I do." "The English have a proverb, Madame, which says: 'A short life and a merry one." "Can you predict that I shall have, if a short life, then a merry one?" "Yes," said Madame Cagliostra, "that I can promise you." But there was no smile on her pale face.
"Look here," said Anna Wolsky earnestly, "you are quite right, Madame; my friend has a necklace which has already played a certain part in her life. But is it not just because of this fact that you feel the influence of this necklace so strongly? I entreat you to speak frankly. You are really distressing me very much!" Madame Cagliostra looked very seriously at the speaker.
In England the wise woman always takes off her wedding-ring on going to see a fortune-teller. She was also rather glad that she had left her pearls in the safe custody of M. Girard. This little house in the Rue Jolie was a strange, lonely place. Suddenly Madame Cagliostra began to speak in a quick, clear, monotonous voice.
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