Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn't tell women the very serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves, though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right sometimes. The last time the woman said, "Fair--verging on red!" and as Ariadne doesn't know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr. Aix, whom she doesn't care for, she frowned and said, "Are you quite sure?" The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a great hurry, and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the Islingtons' lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never! Now, in Lady Scilly's set, they call her "The girl that swallowed Never," and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything countable, and Ariadne doesn't seem to see that it is plain to them all that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn't let every one know that George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and so she does. We don't have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of one even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance. I don't know how much that is. She will never tell.