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Chester had not approved of her going to Paris by herself, and he would certainly have shaken his head had he known of yesterday's visit to Madame Cagliostra. And then Sylvia Bailey began to think of her new friend: of Anna Wolsky. She was sorry, very sorry, that they were going to part so soon. If only Anna would consent to come on with her to Switzerland!
But Madame Cagliostra did not seem to hear the interruption. "Have you heard of a mascot?" she said abruptly. "Of a mascot which brings good fortune to its wearer?" Sylvia bent her head. Of course she had heard of mascots. "Well, if so, you have, of course, heard of objects which bring misfortune to their wearers which are, so to speak, unlucky mascots?"
"We might at least ask her to open the window," she said rather plaintively. It really was dreadfully stuffy! Madame Cagliostra had gone to a sideboard from which she was taking two packs of exceedingly dirty, queer-looking cards. They were the famous Taro cards, but Sylvia did not know that. When the fortune-teller was asked to open the window, she shook her head decidedly. "No, no!" she said.
"He will love you tenderly as well as passionately. And as for you, Madame but no, for me to tell you what you will feel and what you will do would not be delicate on my part!" Sylvia grew redder and redder. She tried to laugh, but failed. She felt angry, and not a little disgusted. "You are a foreigner," went on Madame Cagliostra. Her voice had grown hard and expressionless again.
"Your fate is a fair man, which is strange considering that you also are a fair woman; and I see that there is already a dark man in your life." Sylvia blushed. Bill Chester, just now the only man in her life, was a very dark man. "But this fair man knows all the arts of love." Madame Cagliostra sighed, her voice softened, it became strangely low and sweet.
But Sylvia was a very kindly, happy-natured creature, and she would not have hurt the feelings of even a Madame Cagliostra for the world. She looked at her friend questioningly. Would it not be better just to give the woman five francs and go away? They surely could not expect to hear anything of any value from such a person. She was evidently a fraud!
Madame Cagliostra dealt out the pack of cards in a slow, deliberate fashion and then she uttered a kind of low hoarse cry, and mixed the cards all together, hurriedly. Getting up from the table, she exclaimed, "I regret, Madame, that I can tell you nothing nothing at all! I feel ill very ill!" and, indeed, she had turned, even to Sylvia's young and unobservant eyes, terribly pale.
"Tiens!" she cried suddenly, "what have you got there?" and she took the pink card out of Sylvia's hand. "Madame Cagliostra?" she repeated, musingly. "Now where did I hear that name? Yes, of course it was from our chambermaid! Cagliostra is a friend of hers, and, according to her, a marvellous person one from whom the devil keeps no secrets!
"Your friend," murmured Madame Cagliostra, now addressing herself to Anna and not to Sylvia, "should dispossess herself as quickly as possible of her necklace, of these round balls.
But Anna Wolsky was staring at Madame Cagliostra with a serious look. "Very well," she exclaimed, in her rather indifferent French. "Very well! We will both take the Grand Jeu at fifteen francs the two." She turned and smiled at Sylvia. "It will be," she said, quaintly, and in English, "my 'treat, dear friend."
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