by an arm stretched out behind her. His arm was not round her, but it
might just as well have been, as far as the look of the thing went. He
thought of the arm of Mr. Lewisham.

"Did you ever have your fortune told?" he asked.

"No, never. I've always wanted to, but Father hates gipsies. When I
was a little girl I used to put on my best clothes, and go out into
the lanes and sit about and hope the gipsies would steal me, but they
never did."

"They're a degenerate race, blind to their own interests. But they
haven't a monopoly of chances--fortunately." His eyes were on her
face.

"I never had my fortune told," said Betty. "I'd love it, but I think I
should be afraid, all the same. Something might come true."

Vernon was more surprised than he had ever been in his life at the
sudden involuntary movement in his right arm. It cost him a conscious
effort not to let the arm follow its inclination and fall across her
slender shoulders, while he should say:

"Your fortune is that I love you. Is it good or bad fortune?"

He braced the muscles of his arm, and kept it where it was. That
sudden unreasonable impulse was a mortification, an insult to the man
whose pride it was to believe that his impulses were always planned.

"I can tell fortunes," he said. "When I was a boy I spent a couple of