The letter works upon me like the snap of a mesmerists fingers: _y I blink, look giddily about me, as if emerging from a trance. I look at Sue: at her hand, at the mark of my mouth upon it. I look at the pillows upon my bed, with the dints of our two heads. I look at the flowers in their vase oable-top, at the fire in my grate. The room is too warm. The room is too warm a I am still trembling, as if cold. She sees it. She catches my eye, and nods to the paper in my hand. Good news, miss? she asks; and it is as if the letter has worked some trick upooo: for her voice seems light to me—dreadfully light—and her face seems sharp. She puts away the thimble; but watches, watches. I eet her gaze.
Richard is ing. Does she feel it, as I do? She gives no sign. She walks, she sits, as easily as before. She eats her lunch. She takes out my mothers playing-cards, begins the patient dealing-out of solitary games. I stand at the glass and, in refle, see her reach to take a card and place it, turn it, set it upon another, raise up the
kings, pull out the aces ... I look at my fad think what makes it mihe certain curve of cheek, the lip too full, too plump, too pink.
At last she gathers the pack together and says that if I will shuffle and hold it, and wish, she will study the fall of the cards and tell me my future. She says it, apparently quite without irony; ae myself I am drawn to her side, and sit, and clumsily mix the cards, and she takes them and lays them down. These show your past, she says, and these your present. Her eyes grow wide. She seems suddenly young to me: for a moment we bend our heads and whisper as I think other, ordinary girls, in ordinary parlours or schools or sculleries, might whisper: Here is a young man, look, on horseback. Here is a journey. Here is the Queen of Diamonds, for wealth—
I have a brooch that is set with brilliants. I think of it now. I think—as I have, before, though not in many days—of Sue, breathing proprietorially over the stones, gauging their worth . . .
After all, we are not ordinary girls, in an ordinary parlour; and she is ied in my fortune only as she supposes it hers. Her eye grows narrow again. Her voice lifts out of its whisper and is only pert. I move away from her while she sits gathering the deck, turning the cards in her hands and frowning. She has let one fall, and has not seen it: the two of hearts. I place my heel upon it, imagining one of the painted red hearts my own; and I grind it into the carpet.
She finds it, when I have risen, and tries to smooth the crease from it; then plays on at Patience, as doggedly as before.
I look, again, at her hands. They have grown whiter, and are healed about the nails. They are small, and in gloves will seem smaller; and then will resemble my own.
This must be dohis should have been done, before. Richard is ing, and I am overtaken by a sense of duties u: a panig sehat hours, days—dark, devious fish of time—have slithered by, uncaptured. I pass a fretful night. Then, when we rise and she es to dress me, I pluck at the frill on the sleeve of her gown.
Have you no own, I say, than this plain brown thing you always wear?
She says she has not. I take, from my press, a velvet gown, and have her try it. She bares her arms unwillingly, steps out of her skirt and turns, in a kind of modesty, away from my eyes. The gown is narrow. I tug at the hooks. I settle the folds of cloth about her hips, then go to