Mrs. Thrawn rose and put her crystal back on the writing-table. Then she pulled up the blind.
“We’ve only a few moments left. But I’m going, for my own satisfaction,” she interjected in a singular tone, “to tell your fortune by the cards.”
As she spoke she took a pack of cards out of the drawer of her writing-table, and sank down again into her chair.
“Now, cut.”
After Ivy had obeyed, the soothsayer rapidly dealt out the cards. Then she put down her finger on the queen of hearts.
“This card stands for you,” she dragged her finger along. “And here is the king of diamonds, the man who is coming into your life, and who will give you money, much money. Even so—” she shook her head, “you will never be able to count on him as you can count on the man who is still bound to you, and whom I bid you cast out of your life at once—at once.”
She swept the cards together and rose from her chair.
“I saw trouble in your hand; I saw trouble in the crystal; I saw great trouble in the cards. Yet, Mrs. Lexton, you are not a woman who troubles trouble before trouble troubles you. Even so, unless you follow my advice about your present lover, I see misfortune galloping towards you like a riderless horse.”
“But you do still believe that I’m going to get a lot of money?” Ivy asked pleadingly. “Did the cards tell you that also?”
“Yes, the cards told me that also.”
From outside the door came the sound of footsteps.
“One last word—one last warning. When you came into this room you were not alone, Mrs. Lexton.”
Ivy stared at her. What could Mrs. Thrawn mean? Of course she had been alone!
“You were accompanied, surrounded, by a huge mob of men and women, invisible to you, but visible to me. Are you an actress?”
“I was an actress, for a little while, before I married,” said Ivy, smiling. “And I’d love to go back on the stage, but only as a leading lady, of course.”
“Given certain eventualities, you will become of great moment, of absorbing interest, to hundreds of thousands of people. Men and women will fight over you—the newspapers will record your every movement.”
Ivy smiled self-consciously. This last unexpected prediction gave her a thrill of pleasurable excitement. What could it mean but a triumphant return to the stage, of which she had been hitherto only a humble and transient ornament?
“There is a woman already in your life—I see her now standing behind you. She is a grey-haired, worn-looking old woman. If you fail to do what I advise you to do, she will play an overwhelming part in your destiny. Indeed it is she who may determine your fate.”
Then she turned, and taking a tiny silver-gilt bell off the mantelpiece she rang it sharply.
The door opened, and the maid pulled aside the heavy curtain. There was no stranger waiting on the landing. Ivy looked so surprised that the woman smiled. “Mrs. Thrawn doesn’t like her clients to cross one another. The lady who has just come in is waiting in the front room.”
As Mrs. Thrawn’s late visitor walked quickly down the Embankment towards the place for which she was bound, she felt more really lighthearted than she had felt for, oh! such a long time. Money coming her way—and a new man in her life? That was all Ivy Lexton really remembered of that curious interview. The warnings Mrs. Thrawn had given her she put down to the soothsayer’s conventional outlook on life.
As for the woman’s advice concerning Roger Gretorex, she ought to have known, being a fortune-teller, that she, Ivy, had already made up her mind to break with her secret lover. She could not, however, break with him today, for two reasons. First, she was going to ask him for a little money, and secondly, he was giving a theatre-party this evening. She, Ivy, her friend Rose Arundell, and Jervis Lexton were to be Gretorex’s guests, and he was taking them on, after the play, to supper at the Savoy. That had been settled days ago.
Rose Arundell? She told herself vexedly that Rose would certainly “chuck.” In fact it was plain that Rose had forgotten all about tonight’s engagement, or she would have mentioned it in her letter. They would be three instead of four. But perhaps, after all, that didn’t really matter, for Jervis was quite fond of Roger.
There was, however, a fly, albeit a small fly, in the ointment. There was no such person, there never had been, or, it seemed to her, could be, in her life, as a worn-looking, grey-haired woman. This fact made her feel a little doubtful, a little anxious, as to the truth of the fortune-teller’s other predictions.
II
“Why, there’s Mr. Rushworth! Do go over and ask him to join us for coffee.”
Ivy Lexton was smiling at her husband—a delicious, roguish smile. As he smiled back, he told himself with conscious satisfaction that his little wife was far the prettiest woman here tonight.
Her sleekly brushed-back auburn hair, white skin, violet eyes, and slender rounded figure were wont to remind those few of her admirers familiar with the art of Romney of a certain portrait of Nelson’s Emma, spinning.
Ivy’s husband was pleasantly aware that she was not only the prettiest, but also one of the smartest looking, of the women supping at the Savoy tonight. This was the more commendable, from simple Jervis Lexton’s point of view, as they were so hard up—stony-broke, in fact.
He generally did at once anything Ivy asked him to do, but now he waited for a few moments.
“D’you mean that chap we met at the Hamptons? I don’t see him.”
“Don’t be stupid, darling! He’s over in that corner, with two dowdy-looking women, looking bored to death. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to join us for coffee.”
There had come an edge of irritation in her seductive voice. Ivy had a
