"I'm so sorry!" Constance apologized. "It began to seem so real, I thought I was in that room with you. You are unaccountable! You couldn't know what happened. Yet you have been seeing the thief who stole our silver last night, and the Nelson Smiths' jewellery, but no jewellery of ours. That is the strange part of the affair, for I have a few things I adore--and they would have been easy to find. You didn't even know we _had_ been robbed, did you?" "No, of course not," said the Countess. "I am sorry! Was it in the papers?" "It will be this evening and to-morrow morning! But the police must hear about this vision of yours, the vision of the man with the latchkey. It may help them." "You must not tell the police!" Madalena said, "I have warned you all, that if you talked too much about me and my crystal, the police might hear and take notice. There are such stupid laws in England. I may be doing something against them. If you or Lord Annesley-Seton speak of me to the police I will go away, and you will never hear more of my visions--as you call them--in future. Unless you promise that you will let the police find the thieves in their own way, without dragging me in, I shall be so unnerved that my eyes will be darkened." "Oh, I promise, if you feel so strongly about it," said Constance. "I didn't realize that it might do you harm to be mentioned to the police." She wished very much to have Madalena go on looking in the crystal. She had been excited, carried out of herself for a few minutes, but she had not heard what she had come to hear--why she had been spared the loss of her personal treasures. The desired promise hurriedly made, the Countess gave her attention once more to the crystal. For a time she could see nothing. The mysterious current had been severed by the diversion, and had slowly to be rewoven by the seeress's will. "I can see only dimly," Madalena said. "It was clear before! I cannot tell you why the things you care for were left.... Something _new_ is coming. It seems that this time I am looking ahead, into the future. The picture is blurred--like a badly developed photograph. The thing I see has still to materialize." "Where?" whispered Constance, thrilled by the thought that some event on its way to her down the unknown path of futurity was casting a shadow into the crystal. "Where?" "I see a beautiful room. There are a number of people there--men and women. You are with them, and Lord Annesley-Seton--and Nelson Smith and your cousin Anne. I know most of the faces--not all. Everyone is excited. Something has happened. They are talking it over.... Now I see the room more clearly. It is as if a light were turned on in the crystal. Oh, it is what you call the Chinese drawing room, at Valley House. I know why the room lights up, and why I see everything so much more clearly. It is because I myself am coming into the picture.