She pulled her dress down and revealed a cicatrice on a shape that would have made a model for a sculptor. "I flew at him!" she continued, with a fierce glitter in her eyes, "and drew my knife. I would have stabbed him, but the Patron pulled me away. I should like to see that man again. I should know his face among ten thousand, and I would kill him wherever we met. Then we came here and the Patron left off travelling so much. He says he began at the wrong end, and went to seek the fools, instead of letting the fools come and seek him. I used to think I liked moving about better than always sticking in the same place, but I don't think so now."
"And the fools that come so readily to seek the Patron," asked John Garnet--"what sort of fools are these?"
"The wisest sort," answered the girl. "Many a time I have heard him say that those who come for information, begin by telling him all they want to know. The Patron never seems to listen, but his ears are very sharp. Besides, he can always find out things in a hundred ways, watching the fire and the stars, or reading the cards. The last is the easiest, only they sometimes come up wrong, but the stars _never_ deceive."
She spoke with implicit faith. For this girl, there was an inscrutable power that ruled supreme over all earthly fortunes, and dominated all mortal efforts. She called it Fate, and believed that its decrees were revealed in the cracklings of a wood fire, the combinations on a table of numerals, the presence of the knave of spades in a hand of diamonds, no less than in those tablets of fire that her ancestors had studied, when the Pyramids were as yet unfinished, when the Chaldæan was still learning the alphabet of that wondrous language he discovered in the stars of heaven.
"Then the Patron is a fortune-teller," continued John Garnet, looking with undisguised admiration in his companion's face. "I thought he was a doctor--I am sure he has doctored _me_ to some purpose. I feel as if I should be out of bed to-morrow, and in the saddle next day. Perhaps it's your nursing, pretty Waif; but I seem to get stronger every hour."
It was a tell-tale face, and changed colour often under the clear, swarthy skin. John Garnet, however (and perhaps this was why women liked him well), detected but slowly the interest he created in the opposite sex; and Waif might have blushed till she was scarlet before he found out the truth, had she not pressed both hands to her bosom with a gesture of pain, and exclaimed, in a choking voice: