“This is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year,” said George Finch.
V
I
Madame Eulalie peered into the crystal that was cupped between her shapely hands. The face that had caused Hamilton Beamish to jettison the principles of a lifetime was concentrated and serious.
“The mists begin to clear away!” she murmured.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Waddington. She had been hoping they would.
“There is someone very near to you. …”
“A spirit?” said Mrs. Waddington nervously, casting an apprehensive glance over her shoulder. She was never quite sure that something of the sort might not pop out at any moment from a corner of this dim-lit, incense-scented room.
“You misunderstand me,” said Madame Eulalie gravely. “I mean that that which is taking shape in the crystal concerns someone very near to you, some near relative.”
“Not my husband?” said Mrs. Waddington in a flat voice. A woman, careful with her money, she did not relish the idea of handing over ten dollars for visions about Sigsbee H.
“Does your husband’s name begin with an M?”
“No,” said Mrs. Waddington, relieved.
“The letter M seems to be forming itself among the mists.”
“I have a stepdaughter, Molly.”
“Is she tall and dark?”
“No. Small and fair.”
“Then it is she!” said Madame Eulalie. “I see her in a wedding-dress, walking up an aisle. Her hand is on the arm of a dark man with an eyeglass. Do you know such a person?”
“Lord Hunstanton!”
“I do seem to sense the letter H.”
“Lord Hunstanton is a great friend of mine, and devoted to Molly. Do you really see her marrying him?”
“I see her walking up the aisle.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No! For she never reaches the altar.”
“Why not?” asked Mrs. Waddington, justly annoyed.
“From the crowd a woman springs forth. She bars the way. She seems to be speaking rapidly, with great emotion. And the man with the eyeglass is shrinking back, his face working horribly. His expression is very villainous. He raises a hand. He strikes the woman. She reels back. She draws out a revolver. And then. …”
“Yes?” cried Mrs. Waddington. “Yes?”
“The vision fades,” said Madame Eulalie, rising briskly with the air of one who has given a good ten dollars’ worth.
“But it can’t be! It’s incredible.”
“The crystal never deceives.”
“But Lord Hunstanton is a most delightful man.”
“No doubt the woman with the revolver found him so—to her cost.”
“But you may have been mistaken. Many men are dark and wear an eyeglass. What did this man look like?”
“What does Lord Hunstanton look like?”
“He is tall and beautifully proportioned, with clear blue eyes and a small moustache which he twists between the finger and thumb of his right hand.”
“It was he!”
“What shall I do?”
“Well, obviously it would be criminal to allow Miss Waddington to associate with this man.”
“But he’s coming to dinner tonight.”
Madame Eulalie, whose impulses sometimes ran away with her, was about to say: “Poison his soup”: but contrived in time to substitute for this remark a sober shrug of the shoulders.
“I must leave it to you, Mrs. Waddington,” she said, “to decide on the best course of action. I cannot advise. I only warn. If you want change for a large bill, I think I can manage it for you,” she added, striking the business note.
All the way home to Seventy-Ninth Street Mrs. Waddington pondered deeply. And, as she was not a woman who, as a rule, exercised her brain to any great extent, by the time she reached the house she was experiencing some of the sensations of one who has been hit on the head by a sandbag. What she felt that she needed above all things in the world was complete solitude: and it was consequently with a jaundiced eye that she looked upon her husband, Sigsbee Horatio, when, a few moments after her return, he shuffled into the room where she had planted herself down for further intensive meditation.
“Well, Sigsbee?” said Mrs. Waddington, wearily.
“Oh, there you are,” said Sigsbee H.
“Do you want anything?”
“Well, yes and no,” said Sigsbee.
Mrs. Waddington was exasperated to perceive at this point that her grave matrimonial blunder was slithering about the parquet floor in the manner of one trying out new dance-steps.
“Stand still!” she cried.
“I can’t,” said Sigsbee H. “I’m too nervous.”
Mrs. Waddington pressed a hand to her throbbing brow.
“Then sit down!”
“I’ll try,” said Sigsbee doubtfully. He tested a chair, and sprang up instantly as if the seat had been charged with electricity. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m all of a twitter.”
“What in the world do you mean?”
“I’ve got something to tell you and I don’t know how to begin.”
“What do you wish to tell me?”
“I don’t wish to tell you at all,” said Sigsbee frankly. “But I promised Molly I would. She came in a moment ago.”
“Well?”
“I was in the library. She found me there and told me this.”
“Do kindly get to the point, Sigsbee!”
“I promised her I would break it gently.”
“Break what gently? You are driving me mad.”
“Do you remember,” asked Sigsbee, “a splendid young Westerner named Pinch who dropped in to dinner the night before last? A fine, breezy. …”
“I am not likely to forget the person you mention. I have given strict instructions that he is never again to be admitted to the house.”
“Well, this splendid young Pinch. …”
“I am not interested in Mr. Finch—which is, I believe, his correct name.”
“Pinch, I thought.”
“Finch! And what does his name matter, anyway?”
“Well,” said Sigsbee, “it matters this much, that Molly seems to want to make it hers. What I’m driving at, if you see what I mean, is that Molly came in a moment ago and told me that she and this young fellow Finch have just gone and got engaged to be married!”
II
Having uttered these words, Sigsbee Horatio stood gazing at his wife with something of the
