“To quite a cheap witch.”

Sylvia laughed happily; she was beginning to feel really better now.  She rather wondered that she had never told Count Paul about that strange visit to the fortune-teller, but she had been taught, as are so many Englishwomen of her type, to regard everything savouring of superstition as not only silly and weak-minded, but also as rather discreditable.

“The woman called herself Madame Cagliostra,” she went on gaily, “and she only charged five francs.  In the end we did pay her fifteen.  But she gave us plenty for our money, I assure you—­in fact, I can’t remember half the things she said!”

“And to you was prophesied—?” Count Paul leant forward and looked at her fixedly.

Sylvia blushed.

“Oh, she told me all sorts of things!  As you say they don’t really know anything; they only guess.  One of the things that she told me was that it was possible, in fact, quite likely, that I should never go back to England—­I mean at all!  And that if I did so, I should go as a stranger.  Wasn’t that absurd?”

“Quite absurd,” said Count Paul, quietly.  “For even if you married again, Madame; if you married a Frenchman, for instance, you would still wish to go back to your own country sometimes—­at least, I suppose so.”

“Of course I should.”  And once more Sylvia reddened violently.

But this time Count Paul felt no pleasure in watching the flood of carmine staining not only the smooth, rounded cheek, but the white forehead and neck of his fair English friend.

Sylvia went on speaking, a little quickly.

“She said almost the same thing to Anna.  Wasn’t that odd?  I mean she said that Anna would probably never go back to her own country.  But what was really very strange was that she did not seem to be able to see into Anna’s future at all.  And then—­oh well, she behaved very oddly.  After we had gone she called us back—­” Sylvia stopped for a moment.

“Well?” said Count Paul eagerly.  “What happened then?”

He seldom allowed himself the pleasure of looking into Sylvia’s blue eyes.  Now he asked for nothing better than that she should go on talking while he went on looking at her.

“She made us stand side by side—­you must understand, Count, that we had already paid her and gone away—­when she called us back.  She stared at us in a very queer sort of way, and said that we must not leave Paris, or if we did leave Paris, we must not leave together.  She said that if we did so we should run into danger.”

“All rather vague,” observed the Count.  “And, from the little I know of her, I should fancy Madame Wolsky the last woman in the world to be really influenced by that kind of thing.”

He hardly knew what he was saying.  His only wish was that Sylvia would go on talking to him in the intimate, confiding fashion she was now doing.  Heavens!  How wretched, how lonely he had felt in Paris after seeing her off the day before!