“It was an impulse I could not restrain.”

“I hope the oracle has not been traducing me?”

“I have had no premonitions lately:  when I was suffering I could think of nothing.  But you have been so kind it seems impossible you should bring me harm.”

“I would not for the world,” he broke in earnestly.

“I am drifting blindly, and my mind misgives me that all is not right.  I may be walking toward danger unaware.  I believe I am,” she continued dreamily, “but so long as I do not fall in love, nothing dreadful will happen.”

“You had better fall in love than become a monomaniac,” exclaimed the young man with more warmth than the occasion seemed to warrant.  “If your premonitions have ceased, it is evidence of an improved state of health, and as your physician I forbid you to indulge in them.”

“Doctors think they can treat everything,” she said impatiently; then continued in an explanatory tone:  “I inherit my foreknowledge from my mother, who was a gypsy celebrated in her tribe for reading the future.  You see that the faculty is hereditary with me, and a dose of medicine will not cure it.  My poor mother died at my birth:  she was very young and beautiful.  My father was past forty when he married.  I have never spoken of it before, as he dislikes it to be mentioned.  But you look like a man who could keep a secret, and I want to prove that I am not as foolish as you think.”

Maurice saw it was useless to argue further:  the delusion must be firmly established to have caused this young creature to seclude herself from general society for so long a period.  The facts of her parentage must have been imprudently confided to her when young, and an imaginative temperament had done the rest.  The secresy with which she guarded these ideas served to strengthen them.  He could only hope that the life she was now leading would diminish their influence, or perhaps totally destroy her singular belief.  Maurice thought it would be easy to wait for time to effect this change, but he had not counted on jealousy.

It was, of all people, that rattlecap George Clifton.  George was a man who invariably attached himself where notoriety was to be obtained, and since Miss Lafitte had become the rage he was her shadow.  Maurice, soon after this conversation, had discontinued his professional visits.  He wished gradually to make it evident to Fay that his attentions had a deeper meaning.  Besides, he was scarcely in a state to coolly feel her pulse when he was ready to devour her hand with kisses.  The consequence of this change was that he seldom saw her alone:  he had less opportunity than ever of winning her affection, and he was tormented by thinking that if she became cured of her eccentric fancy, it would be to marry Clifton.

The doctor was a man of expedients.  One evening, when on the shore with Miss Lafitte at a little distance from a party of gay companions, he spied one of those flat-bottomed boats which are a feature of the place, and invited her to enter.  Without a word he sent the tiny craft far over the water, out of hearing, almost out of sight, when, resting on his oars, he began:  “I am glad to see you have entirely given up your faith in premonitions, Miss Lafitte.”