"The wife is a gipsy, sir; born and bred. He is a native of these parts, and superior; but he took to an idle, wandering life, and married the gipsy girl for her beauty. She was Bertha Lee then." "Why, it is quite a romance," said Miss Deveen, amused. "And so it is, ma'am. Rednal told me all on't. They tramp the country, selling their tins, and collecting rabbit skins." "And is the child theirs?" asked Bill. "Ay, sir, it be. But she don't take after her mother; she's like him, her skin fair as alabaster. You'd not think, Rednal says, that she'd a drop o' gipsy blood in her veins. North might ha' done well had he only turned out steady; been just the odds o' what he is--a poor tramp." "Oh, come, never mind the gipsies," cried Helen, impatiently. "You go and bring the cards, Mrs. Ness." One can't go in for stilts at a picnic, or for wisdom either; and when Mrs. Ness brought her cards (which might have been cleaner) none of them made any objection. Even Cattledon looked on, grimly tolerant. "But you can't think there's anything in it--that the cards tell true," cried Lady Whitney to the old woman. "Ma'am, be sure they do. I believe in 'em from my very heart. And so, I make bold to say, would everybody here believe, if they had read the things upon 'em that I've read, and seen how surely they've come to pass." They would not contradict her openly; only smiled a little among themselves. Mother Ness was busy with the cards, laying them out for Helen's fortune. I drew near to listen. "You look just as though you put faith in it," whispered Bill to me. "I don't put faith in it. I should not like to be so foolish. But, William, what she told Helen before _did_ come true." Well, Helen's "fortune" was told again. It sounded just as uneventful as the one told that rainy afternoon long ago--for we were now some years older than we were then. Helen Whitney's future, according to the cards, or to Dame Ness's reading of them, would be all plain sailing; smooth and easy, and unmarked alike by events and by care. A most desirable career, some people would think, but Helen looked the picture of desolation. "And you say I am not to be married!" she exclaimed. Dame Ness had her head bent over the cards. She shook it without looking up. "I don't see a ring nowhere, young lady, and that's the blessed truth. There _ain't_ one, that's more. There ain't a sign o' one. Neither was there the other time, I remember: that time in London. And so--I take it that there won't never be." "Then I think you are a very disagreeable story-telling old woman!" flashed Helen, all candour in her mortification. "Not be married, indeed!"