The Bondwoman. Ryan Marah Ellis

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “You may not,” she replied frankly, recovering herself, and assuming a tone of lightness to conquer the fluttering in her throat. “The list of names I have had to remember this evening is most formidable, another one would make the last feather here,” and she tapped her forehead significantly. “I was just about to flee from it all when–”

      She hesitated and looked about her in an uncertain way. He at once placed a chair for her. She allowed her hand to rest on the back of it as if undecided.

      “You will not be so unkind?” he said; and his words held a plea. She answered it by seating herself.

      “Well?”

      At the interrogation he smiled.

      “Will you not allow me, Madame, to introduce myself?”

      “But, Monsieur Incognito, consider; I have remembered you best because you have not done so; it was a novelty. But all those people whose names were spoken to me this evening–pouf!” and she blew a feathery spray of fern from her palms, “they have all drifted into oblivion like that. Do you wish, then, to be presented and–to follow them?”

      “I refuse to follow them there–from you.”

      His tones were so low, so even, so ardent, that she looked startled and drew her breath quickly.

      “You are bold, Monsieur,” and though she strove to speak haughtily she was too much of a girl to be severe when her eyes met his.

      “Why not?” he asked, growing bolder as she grew more timid. “You grant me one moment out of your life; then you mean to close the gates against me–if you can. In that brief time I must condense all that another man should take months to say to you. I have been speaking to you daily, however, for six weeks and–”

      “Monsieur! Six weeks?”

      “Every day,” he assented, smiling down at her. “Of course you did not hear me. I was very confidential about it. I even tried to stop it entirely when I was allowed to believe that Mademoiselle was Madame.”

      “But it is quite true–she is Madame.”

      “Certainly; yet you let me think–well, I forgive you for it now, since I have found you again.”

      “Monsieur!”–she half arose.

      “Will Mademoiselle have her fortune told?” asked a voice beside them, and the beringed Egyptian pushed aside the palms, “or Monsieur, perhaps?”

      “Both of us,” he assented with eagerness; “that is, if Mademoiselle chooses.” He dropped two pieces of gold in the beaded purse held out. “Come,” he half whispered to the Marquise, “let me see if oblivion is really the doom fate reads against me.”

      She half put out her hand, thinking that after all it was only a part of the games of the night–the little amusements with which purses were filled for charity; then some sudden after thought made her draw it back.

      “You fear the decision?” he asked.

      She did not fear the decision he meant, but she did fear–

      “No, Monsieur, I am not afraid. Oh, yes; she may read my palm, it is all a jest, of course.”

      The Egyptian held the man’s hand at which she had not yet glanced. She took the hand of the Marquise.

      “Pardon, Madame, it is no jest, it is a science,” she said briefly, and holding their hands, glanced from one to the other.

      “Firm hands, strong hands, both,” she said, and then bent over that of the Marquise; as she did so the expression of casual interest faded from her face; she slowly lifted her head and met the gaze of the owner.

      “Well, well? Am I to commit murders?” she asked; but her smile was an uneasy one; the gaze of the Egyptian made her shrink.

      “Not with your own hand,” said the woman, slowly studying the well-marked palm; “but you will live for awhile surrounded by death and danger. You will hate, and suffer for the hate you feel. You will love, and die for the love you will not take–you–”

      But the Marquise drew her hand away petulantly.

      “Oh! I am to die of love, then?–I!” and her light laugh was disdainful. “That is quite enough of the fates for one evening;” she regarded the pink palm doubtfully. “See, Monsieur, it does not look so terrible; yet it contains all those horrors.”

      “Naturally it would not contain them,” said the Egyptian. “You will force yourself to meet what you call the horrors. You will sacrifice yourself. You will meet the worst as the women of ’93 ascended the guillotine–laughing.”

      “Ah, what pictures! Monsieur, I wish you a better fortune.”

      “Than to die of love?” he asked, and met her eyes; “that were easier than to live without it.”

      “Chut!–you speak like the cavalier of a romance.”

      “I feel like one,” he confessed, “and it rests on your mercy whether the romance has a happy ending.”

      She flashed one admonishing glance at him and towards the woman who bent over his hand.

      “Oh, she does not comprehend the English,” he assured her; “and if she does she will only hear the echo of what she reads in my hand.”

      “Proceed,” said the Marquise to the Egyptian, “we wait to hear the list of Monsieur’s romances.”

      “You will live by the sword, but not die by the sword,” said the woman. “You will have one great passion in your life. Twice the woman will come in your path. The first time you will cross the seas to her, the second time she comes to you–and–ah!–”

      She reached again for the hand of the Marquise and compared them. The two young people looked, not at her, but at each other.

      In the eyes of the Marquise was a certain petulant rebellion, and in his the appealing, the assuring, the ardent gaze that met and answered her.

      “It is peculiar–this,” continued the woman. “I have never seen anything like it before; the same mark, the same, Mademoiselle, Monsieur; you will each know tragedies in your experience, and the lives are linked together.”

      “No!”–and again the Marquise drew her hand away. “It is no longer amusing,” she remarked in English, “when those people think it their duty to pair couples off like animals in the ark.”

      Her face had flushed, though she tried to look indifferent. The Egyptian had stepped back and was regarding her curiously.

      “Do not cross the seas, Mademoiselle; all of content will be left behind you.”

      “Wait,” and the Monsieur Incognito put out his hand. “You call the lady ‘Mademoiselle,’ but your guess has not been good;” and he pointed to a plain ring on the hand of the Marquise.

      “I call her Mademoiselle because she never has been a wife, and–she never will be a wife. There are marriages without wedding rings, and there are wedding rings without marriages; pardon!–” and passing between the ferns and palms she was gone.

      “That СКАЧАТЬ