"Absolutely. But that doesn't prove I'm not sincere now."

He pressed her hand with a look that he hoped conveyed the highest respect, the tenderest sympathy, a deep, though carefully suppressed pa.s.sion, and a longing to administer some refined and courteous consolation, and went away.

Wilton was only twenty-five, so, naturally, as soon as he got home, he tried the expression in the mirror, and was horribly disappointed in it.

"I must have looked as if I'd suddenly got an awful twinge of neuralgia," he said to himself.

"It shows how careful one ought to be. Confound it!"

Felicity, however, was not troubling herself about Wilton or his expressive looks. The complicated glance, which he feared was a failure, had not even been seen by her. What he had said cheered her for the moment, and _au fond_, at the back of her brain, with her real sound common sense, she did not actually believe in the cause of her grief.

But pa.s.sion and jealousy, unfortunately, are not governed by sound common sense; they work in circles. Argument and reasoning have but a temporary effect on them; they come back to the point at which they started.

As she looked at Mrs. Tregelly's picture, the feverish chills of suspicion again took possession of her. She told herself repeatedly that she had only been married a year, that Chetwode was in love with her, and had always seemed cold to other women. But he was continually away.

He was charming and attractive. Perhaps the other women he met thought _she_ lived for amus.e.m.e.nt and was utterly neglectful of him. She was afraid she had been imprudent in being seen so much with Wilton, but Chetwode never seemed, really, to mind. He trusted her as she deserved, and as she ought to trust him. Considering the terms that they were on--far more like lovers than husband and wife--it would be real treachery on his part. He was incapable of treachery. She would trust him.

Then the image of Chetwode making love to that pretty woman abruptly forced itself on her mental vision in spite of all reasoning, like a sudden violent physical pain, and she burst into tears.

She controlled them as soon as possible, for she strongly dissented from the old-fashioned idea that a good cry was consoling. On the contrary, she thought that the headache and unbecoming traces of emotion that followed tears had a particularly depressing effect, and left one with nerves. She resolved to dismiss the subject for the moment, anyhow, and to go to Vera's in the afternoon to meet Madame Zero and two or three of Vera's most favoured and intimate friends.

CHAPTER XX

ZERO, THE SOOTHSAYER

Mrs. Ogilvie looked more Egyptian than ever to-day. She always dressed for her parts; and as a believer in the Unseen, she felt it right, in honour of the sibyl, to wear her hair very low, with some green pins in it, long earrings, and a flowing gown, with j.a.panese sleeves.

"Vera, you're almost in fancy dress," said Felicity, as she arrived.

"It's very becoming; but why?"

"Am I, dear? Well, it's as a sort of compliment to this wonderful girl.

I've been draping the little boudoir with gold embroideries--and burning joss-sticks, too (though they give me a headache). I thought it would bring out her gift--make her feel more at home, you know."

"Good gracious, is she an Algerian or an Indian or anything?"

"Oh dear no, darling. Of course not. She's a Highlander, that's all. It runs in her family. To know things that haven't happened, I mean."

"But that _will_ happen?"

"I hope so, I'm sure. She's in there," said Vera, pointing to a beaded curtain, that concealed the small drawing-room. "She's gazing into the crystal for Bob Henderson. You shall go next, darling."

"I should have imagined Captain Henderson the very last person in the world to dabble in the occult, as they call it in the newspapers. I should have thought he would laugh at superst.i.tion."

"Oh, so he does, dear, but he wants to know what's going to win the Derby."

"From all I've heard about racing," said Felicity, "if he wants to know that, he'd better wait till it's run."

"Oh, Felicity, don't cast a sort of damper on the thing before him!

Perhaps he'll be converted. He may take it quite seriously now. It would do him good, he's so matter-of-fact."

At this moment a very loud and hearty laugh was heard, and Captain Henderson appeared through the beaded curtain and joined them.

"What a long time you've been," said Vera.

"She's a pretty girl," said Captain Henderson.

"Any success?" asked Felicity.

"She saw some horses in the crystal. But as she didn't know their names, it was no earthly use to me. Says I'll back the winner for a place, though. She's got second-rate sight--second sight, I mean."

"A great many of these old Highland families have," said Felicity seriously, to please Vera.

"Have they, though? She says she's half Irish," said Henderson, with his characteristic puzzled look. "She's been telling my character too--reading between the lines, you know, the lines on my hand. She doesn't seem to think much of me, Mrs. Ogilvie." He laughed again.

"As soon as she's had some tea," said Vera, ringing, "you must go in, Felicity. We mustn't tire her. It's frightfully exhausting work."

"Must be," a.s.sented Bob.

"It takes it out of her ever so much more with some people than with others," said Vera.

"Ah, it would," said Bob solemnly, shaking his head.

"I suppose complicated people are more wearing than the simpler kind,"

said Felicity. "There's more in them to find out."

"You mean it must have been pretty plain sailing with me?" said Henderson.

Here Wilton arrived.

"There's something about the tone of your delightful home to-day," he said as he greeted Vera, "that makes me feel curiously Oriental. I don't exactly know what it is, but I feel I want to sit down cross-legged on a mat and smoke a hookah. How do you account for it?"

"You 'hear the East a-calling,' and all that sort of thing," said Henderson, laughing. "Eh?"

"Yes. But perhaps after all it's only the east wind. No, it's the incense some one's been burning. At your shrine, of course, Mrs.

Ogilvie. What a talent you have for creating the right atmosphere."

Vera was highly flattered.

"And now I think you might go in, Felicity," she said.

Felicity found a young girl with bright pleasant eyes, seated in front of a little yellow table. She had a magnifying-gla.s.s on one side of her and a crystal ball on the other. She was very neatly dressed in the tailor-made style, and had no superfluous decorations of any kind.