small enough things, no doubt, but sufficiently personal to trouble her youthful heart and shadow all her thought with regret. She was rapidly learning that however bright the outlook of her life might be there were always clouds hovering ready to obscure the smiling of her sun.
She looked at the sky as though the movement were inspired by her thought. There was the early summer sun blazing down upon an already parching earth. And there, too, were the significant clouds, fleecy white clouds for the most part, but all deepening to a heavy, gray density. At any moment they might obscure that ruddy light and pour out their dismal measure of discomfort, turning the world from a smiling day-dream to a nightmare of drab regret.
Her mood lightened as she turned to the picture of the garden city in which they lived. It was called a garden city, but, more properly, it was a beautiful garden village, or hamlet. The place was all hills and dales, wood-clad from their crowns to the deepest hollows in which the sandy, unmade roads wound their ways.
Here and there, amidst the perfect sunlit woodlands, she could see the flashes of white, which indicated homes similar to their own. They were scattered in a cunningly haphazard fashion so as to preserve the rural aspect of the place, and constructed on lines that could under no circumstances offend the really artistic eye. And yet each house was the last word in modernity; each house represented the abiding-place of considerable wealth.
Yes, there was something very beautiful in all this life with which she was surrounded. The pity of it was that there must be those clouds always hovering. She glanced up at the sky again. And with a shiver she realized that the golden light had vanished, and a great storm-cloud was ominously spreading its purplish pall.
At that moment her aunt’s voice, low and significant, reached her from across the room. And its tone told her at once that she was talking to herself.
“You fool – you poor fool. It awaits you as surely as it awaits everybody else. Ride on. Your fate awaits you. And thank your God it is kept hidden from your blinded eyes.”
Joan started.
“Auntie!”
A pair of cold, gray eyes lifted to her face. The shaking, bony hands clutched nervously at the crystal. The eyes stared unseeingly into the girl’s face for some moments, then slowly the fever crept into them again – the fever which the doctor had warned Joan against.
“Oh, auntie, put – put that away.” Joan sprang from her seat and ran to the other’s side, where she knelt imploringly. “Don’t – don’t talk so. You – frighten me.” Then she hurried on as though to distract the woman’s attention. “Listen to me. I want to tell you about my ride. I want to tell about – ”
“You need tell me nothing. I know it all,” Mercy broke in, roughly pushing the clinging hands from about her spare waist. “You rode with young Sorley this morning – Dick Sorley. He asked you to marry him. He told you that since he had known you he had made a small fortune on Wall Street. That he had followed you here because you were the only woman in the world for him. He told you that life without you was impossible, and many other foolish things only fitted for the credulity of a young girl. You refused him. You regretted your refusal in conventional words. And he rode away, back to his hotel, and – his fate.”
The girl listened breathlessly, wondering at the accuracy of this harsh recapitulation of the events of her morning ride. But as the final words fell from the seer’s lips she cried out in protest —
“Oh, auntie. His fate? How? How? What do you mean? How do you know all this?”
Joan had risen to her feet and stood eyeing her aunt in wonder and amazement. The elder woman fondled her crystal in her thin hands. A look akin to joy suddenly leapt into her burning eyes. Her lips were parted so that they almost smiled.
“It is here, here. All here,” she declared exultingly. “The mandates of Fate are voiced amongst the stars, and the moving hand delineates unerringly the enactments – here – here.” She raised the crystal and gazed upon it with eyes alight with ecstasy. “It is for the eye to see, and for the mind to read. But the brain that comprehends must know no thought of human passions, no human emotions. There is nothing hidden in all the world from those who seek with the power of heart and brain.”
Joan’s amazement passed. It was replaced by something like horror and even terror as she listened. To her the words were dreadful, they spoke of the woman’s straining brain, and her thoughts flew to the doctor’s verdict. Was this the madness he had feared? Was this the final crash of a brain driven to breaking-point? The questions flew through her mind only to be swept aside by the recollection of what her aunt had told her of her morning ride. It was true – true. Every word of it. Where could the insanity lie? No – no. It could not be. But – but – such a power!
Her thoughts were cut short. Again her aunt was speaking. But now her voice had once more resumed its customary harshness. The fire had died out of her eyes. Again the dreaded crystal was lying in her lap, fondled by loving fingers. And something approaching a chuckle of malice was underlying the words which flowed so rapidly from her thin lips.
“Haven’t you learned yet? Can’t you read what the hand of Fate is trying to point out to your blinded eyes? Did not the man Cahusac ask you to marry him? Did not you refuse him? And did not he die of typhoid within two weeks of committing that foolishness? And Charlie Hemming. He dared to make love to you. What then? Didn’t he make a fortune on the Cotton Exchange? Didn’t he tell you that it was you who brought him his luck? Luck? Your luck is disaster – disaster disguised. What happened? Hemming plunged into an orgie of riotous living when you refused him. Didn’t he squander his fortune, bolt to Mexico, and in twelve months didn’t he get shot as a rebel and a renegade, and thus add himself to the list of the victims of your – so-called ‘luck’? Luck! Oh, the madness, the blindness of it!”
The woman’s passionate bitterness had lost all sense of proportion. She saw only through her straining nerves. And the injustice of it all brought swift protest to Joan’s lips.
“You are wrong. You are cruel – bitterly, wickedly cruel, auntie,” she cried. “How am I responsible? What have I done?”
In an instant the gray eyes were turned upon her with something akin to ferocity, and her voice rang with passion.
“Wrong? Cruel? I am stating undeniable facts. I am telling you what has happened. And now I am going to tell you the result of your morning’s ride. How are you responsible? What have you done? Dick Sorley has gone to his fate as surely as though you had thrust a knife through his heart.”
“Aunt! How – how dare – ?”
“How dare I say such things? Because I am telling you the truth – which you cannot bear to face. You must and shall hear it. Who are you to escape the miseries of life such as we all have to suffer? Such as you have helped to make me suffer.”
“Don’t – don’t!” Joan covered her face with her hands, as though to shut out the sight of that cruel, working face before her – as though to shut out of her mind the ruthless accusation hurled at her.
But the seer was full of the bitterness so long stored up in her heart, and the moment had come when she could no longer contain it beneath the cold mask she had worn for twenty years. The revelation was hers. Her strange mind and senses had witnessed the scenes that now held her in the grip of their horror. They had driven her to the breaking-point, and no longer had she thought for anything but her own sufferings, and the injustice that a pariah should walk at large, unknown to the world, unknown to itself.
“Don’t?” The woman laughed mirthlessly. Her thin lips parted, but the light
