"Just hold the crystal in your hand for a minute or two. Thank you. Ah! there's a slight cloud on your horizon at this moment, but it will pass away--I see it passing away." "What else do you see?" "I see you in a large space surrounded by a hurrying crowd. There are bookstalls, trucks of luggage, trains, I can't say precisely what it is." "Surely a railway station?" said Felicity. "You are perfectly right. I should fancy from this that you are either going to take a journey by rail, or that you are going to see a friend off." "Do you advise me to take the journey?" "I fear advice one way or the other would have vurry little effect. I am a believer in Fate. Either you're going to take that journey, or you're not, in spite of anything I may suggest to the contrary." And the palmist smiled archly, then leant back and closed her eyes. Felicity wondered if she were tired with the noise of the railway station. But she opened them suddenly, and took Felicity's hand, which she looked at through the magnifying-glass. "This is a most interesting hand. Mrs. Ogilvie's gentleman friend, who was in here just now, also had a vurry interesting hand. She's a lovely woman, and her hand is most interesting too...." She paused. "You have a curious temperament. You are easily impressed by the personality of other people. You are impulsive and emotional, and yet you have a remarkable amount of calm judgment, so that you can analyse, and watch your own feelings and those of the other persons as well as if it were a matter of indifference to you. Your strong affections never blind you to the faults and weaknesses of their object, and those faults do not make you care for them less, but in some cases attach you even more strongly. You are fond of gaiety; your moods vary easily, because you vibrate to music, bright surroundings, and sympathy. But you have depth, and in an emergency I should say you could be capable even of heroism. You have an astonishing amount of intuition." "What a horrid little creature!" said Felicity. "Your tact and knowledge of how to deal with people are so natural to you that you are scarcely conscious of them. You should have been the wife of a great diplomatist." "But aren't they always very ugly?" asked Felicity. "You're not as trivial as you wish to appear," replied the palmist; "you are very frank and straightforward, but reserved on subjects that are nearest your heart.... Is there any question you would like to ask me?" "I should like to know," said Felicity, giving herself away as the most sceptical victim always does, "whether the person I care for is true to me." As she said the words she thought they sounded as if she were a sentimental shop-girl whose young man had shown signs of ceasing his attentions. And why not? She felt exactly like that shop-girl. It was precisely the same thing.