"You could cross my hand with your watch," he said, "and I could take
the crossing as an I.O.U. of the sixpence."

She detached the old watch. He held out his hand and she gravely
traced a cross on it.

"Now," he said, "all preliminary formalities being complied with, let
the prophet do his work. Give me your hand, pretty lady, and the old
gipsy will tell you your fortune true."

He held the hand in his, bending back the pink finger-tips with his
thumb, and looked earnestly at its lines. Then he looked in her face,
longer than he had ever permitted himself to look. He looked till her
eyes fell. It was a charming picture. He was tall, strong, well-built
and quite as good-looking as a clever man has any need to be. And she
was as pretty as any oleograph of them all.

It seemed a thousand pities that there should be no witness to such a
well-posed tableau, no audience to such a charming scene. The pity of
it struck Destiny, and Destiny flashed the white of Betty's dress, a
shrill point of light, into an eye a hundred yards away. The eye's
owner, with true rustic finesse, drew back into the wood's shadow,
shaded one eye with a brown rustic hand, looked again, and began a
detour which landed the rustic boots, all silently, behind the shed,
at a spot where a knot-hole served as frame for the little picture.
The rustic eye was fitted to the knot-hole while Vernon holding
Betty's hand gazed in Betty's face, and decided that this was no time
to analyse his sensations.

Neither heard the furtive rustic tread, or noted the gleam of the pale