May Fleming - Sharing Her Crime - A Novel

"Humph! I'd like to see them trying to put my eyes out," said Gipsy. "I guess I'd make them sing, and on the wrong side of their mouths, too – at least, I think I should!"

"Oh, Miss Hagar, tell us our fortunes – you haven't done so this long time," exclaimed Archie, jumping up. "Here is Gipsy wants to know hers, and Celeste's, too; and as for me, I know the future must have something splendid in store for so clever a fellow, and I'm anxious to know it beforehand."

"Don't be too anxious," said Miss Hagar, fixing her gloomy eyes prophetically on his eager, happy face; "troubles are soon enough when they come, without wishing to forestall them."

"Why, Miss Hagar, you don't mean to say I'm to have troubles?" cried Archie, laughing. "If they do come, I'll laugh in their face, and cry, 'Never surrender.' I don't believe, though, my troubles will be very heavy."

"Yes, the heaviest troubles that man can ever know shall be thine," said the oracle, in her deep, gloomy voice. "The day will come when despair, instead of laughter, will fill your beaming eyes; when the smile shall have left your lip, and the hue of health will give place to the dusky glow of the grave. Yes, the day will come when the wrong you may not quell shall cling to you like a garment of flame, crushing and overwhelming you and all you love, in its fiery, burning shame. The day will come when one for whom you would give your life shall desert you for your deadliest enemy, and leave you to despair and woe. Such is the fate I have read in the stars for you."

"La! Archie, what a nice time you're going to have," said the incorrigible Gipsy, breaking the impressive silence that followed the sibyl's words – "when all that comes to pass! It will be as good as a play to you."

"Miss Hagar must have sat up all last night getting that pretty speech by heart," said Minnette, fixing her mocking black eyes on the face of the spinster. "How well she repeated it! She'd make her fortune on the stage as a tragedy queen."

"Scoffer!" said the sibyl, turning her prophetic eyes on the deriding face of the speaker, while her face darkened, and her stern mouth grew sterner still. "One day that iron heart of thine shall melt; that heart, which, as yet, is sealed with granite, shall feel every fiber drawn out by the roots, to be cast at your feet quivering and bleeding, unvalued and uncared for. Come hither, and let me read your future in your eyes."

"No, no!" said Minnette, shaking back, scornfully, her glossy black hair. "Prate your old prophecies to the fools who believe you. I'll not be among the number."

"Unbeliever, I heed it not!" said Miss Hagar as she rose slowly to her feet; and the light of inspiration gathered in her eyes of gray, as, swaying to and fro, she chanted, in a wild, dirge-like tone:

Her eyes were still riveted on the deriding face and bold, bright eyes, that, in spite of all their boldness, quailed before her steady gaze.

"Good-gracious, Miss Hagar, if you haven't nearly frightened this little atomy into fits!" said Gipsy. "I declare, of all the little cowards ever was, she's the greatest! Now, if I thought it wouldn't scare the life out of her, I'd have my fortune told. If everybody else is going to have such pretty things happen to them, I don't see why I shouldn't, too."

"Come here, then, and let me read thy fate," said Miss Hagar. "The spirit is upon me to-night, and it may never come more."

"All right. Archie, stop grinning and 'tend this little scary thing. Now, go ahead, Miss Hagar."

The seeress looked down solemnly into the dark, piquant little face upturned so gravely to her own; into the wicked brown eyes, twinkling and glittering with such insufferable mischief and mirth; and, bending her tall body down, she again chanted, in her dreary tone:

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