“I have left invitations for you all to come to dinner to-night,” she said, as Malcolm and Keith came up to shake hands.  “Your Aunt Allison has consented to play fortune-teller for us.  Have you ever had your fortune told, Rob?  You are to come, too.”

“Yes, once,” answered Rob, cautiously, catching a warning look from Eugenia.  “It wasn’t very satisfactory, though, and I’ll be glad to try it again.”

Such a flush had spread over the Little Colonel’s face that Mrs. Sherman noticed it.  “I am afraid you have ridden too far in this noonday heat, little daughter,” she said.  “You’d better go up-stairs and bathe your face.”

The boys took their leave, and Lloyd escaped from her mother’s watchful eyes to follow her advice.  When she came down to lunch, the flush was gone from her cheeks, but there was an uncomfortable pricking of her conscience that stayed with her all that afternoon, and deepened steadily after Miss Allison’s arrival.

CHAPTER IX.

HER SACRED PROMISE.

The fortune-telling began immediately after dinner.  Miss Allison sat one side of a screen, and one by one the palms were thrust through a narrow opening for her to examine.  Mrs. Sherman sat beside her, so neither of them saw the amused glances the children exchanged behind the screen, whenever her prophecies contradicted what the old gypsy had told them.

“I can judge of your chief characteristics by your hands,” she said, “and it is wonderful how much palmistry reveals in that way; but I shall have to draw on my imagination for your future fortunes.”  This she did in such a bright amusing way that screams of laughter went up from behind the screen, and the hands she held often shook with merriment.

Not having had the experience of the gypsy tent, Betty awaited her turn with more interest than the others, and thrust her little brown hand through the opening, half afraid.  She wondered what secrets it would tell Miss Allison, who, in addition to all the pleasant, complimentary things she had told, had added some very plain truths.  Eugenia’s hand, she said, showed its owner to be extravagant and wilful; Malcolm’s, vain and overbearing; Keith’s, disorderly; and Rob’s, lacking in judgment.

Miss Allison held Betty’s hand a moment, not certain to whom it belonged, although she might have guessed, considering how brown and hardened by work it was.  “Too sensitive and too imaginative by far,” she said.  “But I like this little hand.  It will always be faithful in little things as well as big, and will keep its promises to the utmost.  It is a hand that can be trusted.”

Betty’s face shone.  What Miss Allison had said pleased her more than the fortune which followed, although it foretold a long life full of as many interesting happenings as if she had Aladdin’s wonderful lamp to use as she chose.  She looked at her hand with a new interest after she had withdrawn it from the screen, and Keith found her studying it again after the fortune-telling was done, and the others had gone into the drawing-room.