She took my arm and we approached the crowd. It was as Alice had said: the woman was telling fortunes. She was holding the delicate white fingers of the elder Miss Glanville, whose handsome face was rosy red. Everybody was on the broad grin. The gipsy woman holding the girl’s fingers talked with her eyes upon the palm of the hand, but sometimes she would flash a look into Miss Glanville’s face. The creature spoke deliberately, with a slow drawling whine. She seemed to heartily enjoy her task, and to be in no hurry to proceed with her business of divination. Her face was heavy, the features strong and coarse, and the whole head would have better suited a man’s than a woman’s figure; yet the countenance was not wanting in a certain wild comeliness. The nose was of the true Egyptian pattern as we are taught to understand the meaning of the word Egyptian by ancient chiselling and inscriptions, and her hair, or as much as was visible of it, resembled a wig manufactured from a horse’s tail. ‘He will make you unhappy,’ she was saying in her drawling whining voice, ‘but you will be true to him. Yet you will not be sorry when he dies, and a handsome man will be your second. But he will have to wait for you, and cheerfully will he wait for you, my lady, for he’s waiting for you now. True love is never in a ’urry.’ There was a laugh. ‘He will not bring you money. No, it is your ladyship that will set him up; but he’ll never be made to feel his want of money, for your ’art beats fond.’ ‘What stuff!’ said Alice. ‘It makes her blush, yet she does not look displeased,’ I whispered. ‘Can’t you name the two fortunate gentlemen, mother?’ exclaimed a tall, slender young man known to me as simply Mr. Stinton. ‘Names is nothing,’ answered the gipsy woman, without lifting her eyes from the girl’s hand, ‘it’s persons, not names, as my art deals with.’ And then she went on to tell the blushing Miss Glanville that her home after her second marriage would not be in England but in Italy. She would live by a lake; an Italian nobleman would fall in love with her, and though there would be no reason for jealousy the Italian nobleman would cause a little unhappiness between her and her second. The Italian nobleman would praise her singing and excite a passion in her for the stage, but it would not come to the stage, for her second’s wishes would prevail, and the Italian nobleman after a time would withdraw and never more be heard of. Other rubbish of this sort did the fierce-looking gipsy woman drawl and whine out, sometimes in language very well expressed, and sometimes using slang or cant words which never failed to provoke the laughter of the gentlemen.