The gipsy viewed me with her bright eyes and her teeth bared, but apparently she had no more fortune to tell me. ‘I say, missis,’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson, ‘I should like to have your opinion upon the lady’s quality. If she ain’t a titled woman, don’t she spring from a noble stock now?’ ‘Ah, my pretty gentleman,’ whined the gipsy turning to view him, ‘The duckkerin dook does not tell me that.’ ‘You’ve told fortunes enough in your time to be able to tell breeding, I hope, when you see it,’ said Sir Frederick. ‘Oh, my pretty gentleman,’ drawled the woman, ‘to us poor gipsies all the world is alike. We are all brothers and sisters, and those that are kind,’ said she, bobbing a curtsey at him, ‘we love best and think most of, and they are the true quality people of the earth.’ ‘But you have not done with the lady yet, I hope?’ cried Mrs. Webber. ‘You have told her nothing.’ ‘My gorgeous angel,’ answered the woman, ‘I have told the sorrowful lady all I know, and what I know is the truth.’ ‘What’s her country, mother?’ inquired Mr. Stinton. She eyed him sideways with a cat-like look, but made no reply. ‘Tell us, my good woman, in what country you think her home is?’ said Mr. Webber. ‘Who can tell? I will not answer that,’ said the gipsy. ‘There are many countries for the likes of such as the sorrowful lady to have a home in. There is Russia and Spain and ’Olland. In them countries are plenty of English gorgios. Where her home may be I cannot tell, for the dook is silent.’ ‘What Dook is she talking of?’ exclaimed Sir Frederick Thompson. ‘Oh, sweet gentleman,’ she said, turning upon him again, ‘the dook is the spirit that enables me to tell dukkeripen.’ ‘Hearing you speak of Spain, mother, I thought you might have meant the Dook of Wellington,’ said Sir Frederick. Mrs. Webber looked at her husband with a face of vexation, as though irritated by the vulgar jokes of the little city gentleman at such a moment of romance. ‘Your dook is but a shabby expounder of riddles if he cannot tell us why the lady should be found insensible and washing about the ocean in a little bit of an open boat,’ said Mr. Wedmold. ‘Can’t the dook make a guess?’ ‘You forget, Mr. Wedmold, that fortune-telling means reading the future, not the past,’ said Mrs. Webber. ‘And that is right, my beautiful lady,’ cried the gipsy; ‘but I have told the sorrowful lady her past too, and by-and-bye the dook may tell me what her name is and where her ’ome is, and how many childer she has; and if I enable her to return to her friends, I hope,’ said she, sinking her knees in a curtsey, ‘that the poor gipsy woman will be remembered.’ Captain Ladmore, who had been looking on and listening all this while, stalked away from the crowd of us to the rail, and remained there, gazing seawards.