Chapter 5
For one moment Welton Keynes thought that he would be discovered, dragged out from his hiding place, and exposed by the astute masculine client who would not be satisfied with mere assurances on the part of Miss Ferriby that he and she were alone, and out of earshot of any other person.
But it was only for a moment.
Then Miss Ferriby, with that remarkable agility which distinguished her from all the other old women Welton had ever met, had sprung up from the pile of cushions upon which she was sitting, and taking her sceptical client by the hand drew him gently away from the black curtain which hung between the portion of the room where she held her séances, and that in which Welton was sitting.
"I am afraid," she said gently, but with so much firmness that the lively young man with whom she had to deal had at once to resign himself to be dictated to by her, "that you will have to submit to the rules I make for my visitors, or else I will have to forego the pleasure of satisfying either your anxiety or your curiosity -- whichever motive brought you to see me."
He laughed, but at once spoke apologetically. "Well, Miss Ferriby, and supposing it were curiosity alone which made me come and see you, is there any harm in my satisfying it to the extent of finding out whether you have any assistants in this business?"
As he spoke in a clear, well modulated voice, crisply and distinctly, Welton suddenly recognized the tones as those of a well-known Member of Parliament, a Cabinet Minister of a few months' standing, and one of the most brilliant of the public men of the day.
It seemed inconceivable that such a man should have come on any errand but curiosity, or perhaps the fulfilment of a bet, and it was impossible to withhold admiration from Miss Ferriby for the cleverness with which she treated him.
Laughing in her turn, but still holding him by the hand, she said promptly, "There's not the least harm in your curiosity, and if I were an impostor, trying to make a living out of the credulity of foolish people, I should praise your zeal in the cause of common sense. But as I don't profess, or pretend either, to tell fortunes or to foretell future events. All I do is to answer questions satisfactorily enough to induce crowds of people to come and ask more, so I really don't see in whose behalf you are so zealous."
The Honourable Barton Cullingworth then spoke in an apologetic tone, as if rather ashamed of himself. "Indeed, Miss Ferriby, you're quite wrong," he said. "I really wish to consult you, to hear what you have to say on a point that is perplexing me. And as it's rather a delicate matter, I'm anxious that it should not be overheard by anyone."
And again he turned, as if about to proceed to the investigations which she had interrupted.
But again she was too quick for him. "Although there is nobody actually within hearing," she said, not yet relaxing her hold of his hand, "there may very likely be someone in the next room. So, if you are at all nervous as to the thinness of the walls, pray tell me your difficulty in a whisper instead of saying it aloud. And if you like, I will answer your questions in the same way."
Mr. Cullingworth caught at her first words. "You say there is someone in the next room?" he persisted.
"I said," replied Miss Ferriby, "that there might very likely be someone there. I have a small room next to this, where a shy client who does not care to wait for his interview -- it is generally a member of your sex who is so shy -- in the crowd downstairs, comes to wait his turn. Now are you satisfied?"
"Oh, all right," said Mr. Cullingworth, in a tone which implied that he was not more than half convinced. "Let me see, what is the fee?"
"Ten guineas."
"Ah! Paying game, Miss Ferriby!" Mr. Cullingworth laughed softly.
She laughed too. "Why do you encourage me then? It is so easy to keep your money in your pocket and to remain outside."
"No, it isn't. The easiest thing is to follow the lead. And everybody comes to you. You're the fashion."
"Well, I work pretty hard, and they tell me I do some good with it. My charities get the benefit. More than one will tell you that I do more for them than anybody else does." Then abruptly she brought him back to business. "And now for your questions. Whisper as low as you please."
Mr. Cullingworth bent his head, and said something in her ear much too low for Welton Keynes to hear. Then he sat back in his chair and there was a pause.
Welton Keynes noticed that for this sceptical client Miss Ferriby did not use the mirror with its vague moving images. Instead, she took the cover off the little Turkish table that stood beside her, and bent her head to look into a bowl of water which was placed upon it.
After a few minutes spent in gazing into this, she raised her head, beckoned to Mr. Cullingworth, and when he leaned forward, she gave him in a whisper a somewhat lengthy answer.
"By Jove!" he ejaculated once or twice as she spoke. Then he sat back, and so did Miss Ferriby.
He wanted to speak again, but she waved her hand, and said with decision, "That is all, absolutely all I have to tell you."
He rose reluctantly. "I admit it's worth the money," he said with another laugh as he went out of the room.
Then another lady came up, and another and another, until the little clock in the shape of a globe which stood on a side table in Miss Ferriby's room struck the half-hour after four.
A lady had just gone out.
Miss Ferriby sprang to her feet, extinguished the two candles with almost incredible rapidity, while a moment later Welton felt the rapid movement of the air in front of him as the curtain which had divided the portion of the room in which he was sitting from the other was drawn up by means of a spring.
He rose and went to the door by which he had entered, but found it locked or bolted on the outside.
As he stood turning the handle vainly, however, there was a sudden change in the room, which was on the instant flooded with bright daylight, and turning quickly, he found himself in a room which looked as unlike as possible to the gloomy haunt of a sham seer.
Now that the black veil or curtain had been raised by a spring to the ceiling, where it was hidden by a valance of rich covering, heavily tasselled and hung with silken cords, he found himself in a room about twenty feet long and ten or twelve wide, brightly and well furnished with the richness characteristic of the whole house, but without any features suggestive of the cave of an enchantress.
Even the magic mirror had disappeared, and in its place was an oil painting of a lady, which filled the gilt frame and looked well against the red velvet-hung wall.
Miss Ferriby herself looked a quaint figure as she stood by the window in her exotic garb, and pulled aside the curtains with her bejewelled fingers. She looked tired and harassed, Welton thought, but she was energetic enough to cross the room to the table by the door, and to take out of the drawer underneath such a large number of banknotes that he stood marvelling at the credulity and superstition of the twentieth century, which could fritter away so much money on such follies.
Miss Ferriby, he had already noticed, did not put enough faith in her clients to leave their offerings exposed to view. No sooner did one client leave her presence than the mystic jumped up from her cushions and hastily emptied the latest contribution into the drawer underneath the table. It was from this receptacle that she was now taking her earnings.
Welton, who was indignant at having been forced to sit quietly by while this shameless exploitation of her clients was going on, stood moody and silent until Miss Ferriby counted out one hundred and forty-nine pounds, which she put into a leather wallet that she wore underneath her overdress. She chuckled as she did so, and then looked up at him.
"Not bad that, for an afternoon's work," she remarked coolly, as she shut the drawer, "but I notice that I am short of a pound. So one of my fair friends was weak in her arithmetic apparently."
"Surely," burst out Welton Keynes, forgetting the respect due to his employer in the indignation he felt at her behaviour, "you don't make these silly women pay ten pounds for no more than telling them a f
ew sentences of advice such as they could get from anybody?"
Miss Ferriby laughed without a qualm. "Why shouldn't I take their money, which all goes to support the charities in which I am interested, if they will give it me for so little?"
"But it's such nonsense! There's nothing in it all," he protested.
"I beg your pardon. You can't have listened to what I said this afternoon without knowing that what I did tell them was always for their good, that I gave them good advice, and that I told them nothing which they could twist into anything mischievous."
"You gave good advice to several, I know. But you foretold things, and that must have been mere guesswork, and productive of mischief."
Miss Ferriby appeared quite unmoved by his displeasure, and very patient with his reproaches. "If you had known a little more about these people, if you had known as much as I do, for instance, you would not have thought it such mere guesswork as it now appears to you."
He remembered as she spoke, that more than one of the ladies had been so greatly struck with what Miss Ferriby told her as to leave the room in a half-fainting condition. "Then it must be trickery," he said boldly.
At that there came a change over Miss Ferriby's face, and he thought he had gone too far.
"That," she said coldly, "is my affair, and theirs. If they are satisfied, and more than satisfied by what I tell them, surely there is no more to be said. They come to consult me; I give them good advice which they would not take from anybody else; I am sometimes clever enough to foretell what is bound to happen, as you must have seen by the way they took it. And who gets the benefit of their silliness and my cleverness? Why, the orphan, the needy, the cripple, the old, the overworked. If that is trickery, it's a pity there isn't more of it in the world."
But Welton, who was thoroughly roused, and thoroughly disgusted by the whole proceedings, would not be silenced. "At any rate," he said sharply, "since these people came to you in the fullest confidence that they were alone with you, that they were pouring out their hearts and telling their secrets to someone who would keep their counsel, it was surely unpardonable in you to allow two other people to be present during these interviews. I never felt so guilty, so ashamed in all my life as I did when I was forced to listen to these poor dupes confessing themselves to you in my hearing. The confessional ought always to be sacred, whether it is in a church or not."
At last he had gone too far. Miss Ferriby's great grey eyes flashed fire. "Dupes!" she cried angrily. "Don't talk to me of dupes, if you please. If they are dupes, it is by their own credulity. I do no more to dupe them than their own dearest friends, and their spiritual advisers, if they have any. As for your being present, it was by your own wish. You were dying of curiosity, and I gratified it. You ought to thank, instead of abusing me."
"I beg your pardon. I am not abusing you. I am only protesting. I would not have asked you to let me be present if I had had any idea that I must listen to confidences not intended for me. And when I wanted to get away, I was forced into remaining by some person whom you had set to mount guard over me."
"Of course, I couldn't risk your crying out," retorted Miss Ferriby. "It was only the footman who lets you in, an old servant of mine, whom I ordered to keep you quiet if your own good sense should fail you, as it appears to have done."
Now Welton Keynes knew that this was not, could not be true. He had up to now only seen one servant in the house, the tall, handsome man who let him and the other visitors into the house and did the waiting, and who seemed to be the only servant about the place."
He said nothing. Obviously he could not have been kept a prisoner upstairs while the footman was wanted below to usher in the visitors.
The look of disbelief on his face annoyed Miss Ferriby. "Do you doubt me?" she asked sharply.
"I am obliged to do so. At least, I don't see how it was possible for the footman to be downstairs showing in your visitors, and upstairs keeping me quiet at the same time."
Apparently this objection had not occurred to her, clever as she was. She dismissed it, however, with a shrug. "If you are determined not to believe me," she said dryly, "I don't suppose it is of much use for me to tell you anything."
"Surely you can't expect me to believe that I am the only person who has ever been shut in that room while the séances were going on," protested Welton Keynes quietly.
She hesitated.
"I use that division for other purposes," she said petulantly. "Sometimes there are two or three persons coming to me at the same time, and then I put them in there, and remain on the other side myself."
This was a lame explanation, which meant nothing. Welton Keynes continued to look incredulous.
"If you are ready," Miss Ferriby said after a pause, with some acerbity, "I will now come downstairs and see the letters you have written."
Welton felt startled. "I haven't had time to finish them yet, Miss Ferriby," he said stiffly. "I'll go and do them now."
He went quickly out of the room and down to the library, where the letters were lying just as he had left them. He was, however, in such a state of agitation that he could scarcely give his mind to the work he had to do. When the curtain in the corner was raised in half an hour's time, and Miss Ferriby came in again, he had still a good deal to do. He rose at once, aware that she could see at a glance that he had by no means got over his discomfiture.
"I'm afraid," he began, "that there's still a great deal to do."
"Never mind," she said graciously, almost caressingly. "Stay and dine with me, and there will be time, after we have had a cup of tea, for you to finish everything."
"Thank you, I couldn't do that," he said. "My brother expects me."
"I will have a telegram sent to him to say you are detained."
She would not allow him to protest, but touched the button beside her, and in a few minutes the tall footman answered the summons, bearing the tea tray.
"Take the tray into the small drawing room as usual," she said. "And then I want you to send off a telegram. Give me a form."
Then she rose and invited Welton to follow her into the drawing room. He did so, still with the same gravity and stiffness of manner as before. When he had taken the seat she indicated, and she had mounted as usual into her high-backed chair, she leaned forward, and in the rather disconcerting way she had, put her chin in her hand to stare at him penetratingly.
"What a farce it is," she said mockingly at last, "for you to put on these airs of being offended, just because you know I tell fortunes. What is there worse in that than in City business, for example, company promoting, the trade you were brought up on?"
Welton was startled by this address, which indeed left him without any very good answer. He stammered, and she cut him short.
"Did you, pray, ever treat your own father to these heroics, and object to being kept and educated by him on the profits made by his business?"
Welton stared at her in alarm. What did she know about his father? He had certainly never told her anything about him, never mentioned either his name or his business. Yet she knew all about him, and now threw in his face his father's business as if she had been intimately acquainted with all the details of it.
"A boy can't very well tell his father he disapproves of his profession," Welton stammered out at last. "But I quite agree with you that there is much to be said against the sort of business that is known as company promoting. There is, however, this to be said on the other side that, if it is worthy of punishment, it really gets its deserts. My father's fortune disappeared with great suddenness, as, since you know so much, I dare say you know."
Miss Ferriby nodded. "Yes, that's the way with most fortunes made in that way," she said quietly. "And you might say much the same of my fortune. It is quickly made, as I've no doubt you must have remarked, but my vogue as a fortune-teller may be at an end at any moment. Somebody else may spring up with a new name, new method, and in a moment away goes my wealthy and smart clientele, and I am left lamenting
!"
Welton said nothing to this. Indeed he was almost stupefied by the whole business, by the silliness displayed by the horde of smart women who thronged the little house and let themselves be fleeced at such an extravagant rate for the pleasure of hearing the little hunchback repeat a few sentences, either in advice, warning, or so-called prophecy: by the openness with which the business was carried on, by the artfulness which surrounded the little suburban residence with a certain air of mystery and singularity.
Judged from this standpoint, the absence of visible servants, the darkened rooms, the contrast between the drawing room where the visitors were received, and the apartment where the fortune-telling went on, were all evidences of considerable ability and knowledge of human nature.
Unconsciously he looked at Miss Ferriby, and wondered as he looked. But she was quick to see the expression on his face, and turning upon him unexpectedly, she asked, "What are you thinking about?"
After a moment's hesitation he answered truthfully. "I was thinking how very clever you must be, Miss Ferriby."
She smiled, not ill pleased. "Well, perhaps it's not so much cleverness as luck which has done so much for me," she answered slowly. "I don't say there isn't a good deal of human knowledge required to set up in my business. I don't say that I'm not careful to make the most of my knowledge. But luck must help one at the outset, in this as in every other trade or profession, and it helped me. I had a distinguished client who had reason to be startled and delighted with the success of a prophecy I made, and the news of that soon spread and brought me more clients than I could well deal with."
"I dare say you find the work very exhausting," suggested Welton, who had wondered at the short hours during which she received.
"Yes, I do."
Welton, however, looked incredulous. Certainly the work, as he had seen it performed, looked far from arduous. But as he had seen many more people waiting on the previous day than could possibly have been interviewed in the hours during which Miss Ferriby received, he concluded that she wished it to be supposed that the work was of an exhausting nature.
She was clever enough to read his incredulity in his eyes, and so she presently laughed, and said, "You don't mean what you say. You are wondering, since it pays so well, why I don't receive during longer hours? Why, for instance, there were fourteen people sent away today disappointed at not having been received by me, while there were nine disappointed yesterday."
"That's just what I was thinking."
A malicious smile appeared on the hunchback's face. "It is better not to make oneself too cheap," she said. "These people who can't get to see me one day, will come again the next. In the meantime they will grumble loudly at the difficulty of seeing me, and give me an excellent advertisement."
"And you do all this in the cause of charity?" asked Welton suddenly.
A flush appeared in the hunchback's face, and he perceived that his question was a most indiscreet one.
"Of course," said Miss Ferriby, with some haughtiness. "You can scarcely suppose that I, who am very well off, should take all this trouble except for a purpose which lay very near my heart."
"Oh, of course not," said the young man hastily. "You must be a godsend to some of the charities you help."
"I think," she said, leaning back with a satisfied air, and waving her hand in the direction of the pile of letters with which he was dealing, "you can have little doubt on that point after the samples you have seen of my correspondence."
"No, indeed. They overwhelm you with gratitude."
Afraid that he had shown but little tact in his share of the conversation, Welton bent his head over the letter with which he was at the moment dealing. There was silence for some minutes. Then, raising his head in curiosity to see what Miss Ferriby was doing while she remained so very quiet, he was surprised, almost startled to find that she was bending forward to stare at him with a look in her great grey eyes which was so keen as to be somewhat alarming. It was as if she had been trying to extract his thoughts without the use of words.
He looked down again quickly. There was something uncanny in her look, something strangely inconsistent with her grey hair and supposed age in the fire with which she gazed at him.
He found himself wondering whether she was really as old as she pretended to be; whether she found a burden of years desirable in her profession of clairvoyant and whether the mass of tangled grey hair, which formed such a picturesque, if untidy, background to her face, with its burning grey eyes and masculine expression, were really her own after all.
The moment that she found him looking at her, Miss Ferriby drew back into the shadow of her corner, where she sat as motionless and as silent as a statue until he had finished the letters. Then she took them one by one as before, read them and gave them back with an indescribable gentleness and graciousness of manner, which Welton thought womanly and touching.
Then she told him to go and smoke his cigarette in the garden until dinner time, which she had fixed for half past six on his account. Welton held up the curtain for her to go out, and then profited by her suggestion and went into the garden.
He was disturbed and uneasy, and resolved to ask her that very night to excuse him from further attendance. Although he recognized the truth of all she had said, that the trade of fortune-teller was little worse than some other better thought of professions, that she was collecting a large amount for charities, and that the people who came to her would certainly go to someone else for the same purpose if she were to give up her remunerative employment, he disliked the atmosphere of deception and fraud which surrounded the whole business, and he was still highly incensed at the manner in which he had been forced to listen to confidences intended for Miss Ferriby's ear alone.
Although when in her presence her masculine personality and force of will dominated him, and made him overlook certain of the more repulsive features of her calling, no sooner was he alone than he recalled them; recalled too the fact that she had not scrupled to employ force to keep him in his distasteful place, and that the darkened space behind the thin curtain was evidently used for purposes of espionage, which had not been properly explained away.
He was struck, too, by the coolness with which she had received his remonstrances; as if the dishonourable conduct of which she had been guilty in introducing a stranger to overhear the confidences made to her were of no account at all.
Not only did she evidently look upon her visitors as the silliest of dupes, but she appeared quite cynically unconcerned about their secrets, some of which must obviously be serious enough to darken their lives.
And there darted into his mind the fear that if she was not very scrupulous as to the character of her own servants and dependents, some of these must necessarily become acquainted sooner or later with important secrets, and be in a position to levy blackmail upon Miss Ferriby's too confiding visitors.
All things considered, he could not doubt the wisdom of the course he proposed, and he was pondering what excuse he should find to offer to her, when the gong sounded and he came indoors.
In the hall he was met by the tall footman, who showed him into a room where he found his own dress clothes laid out for him, as if by the practised hand of a clever valet.
"Miss Ferriby sent to your home for your things, sir," explained the man simply, as Welton stared at his own coat, in doubt whether it could really be his own.
He dressed quickly, and at the sound of the second gong he came downstairs, and was shown by the footman into a pretty dining room in the front of the house, where dinner was laid for two.
As usual in this mysterious house, everything was exquisitely served. Miss Ferriby herself came in at one door as he entered by the other, and he was struck by the grotesque and painful contrast, which the square-cut dress of ivory satin with its long train, and the beautiful lace and jewels which she wore, presented to the deformed and stunted figure, the long, hard, masculine face and the large, pale hands.
Once
more he was struck with the singular contrast between the grey hair and the fiery eyes. How old was she? If she was sixty, her eyes were too young, her face was too smooth. If she was thirty-five, what was the meaning of the grey hair?
They sat down to dinner, and Miss Ferriby showed herself in such a charming mood, feminine, witty, vivacious, that Welton doubted more and more whether she was really as old as she chose to say. Younger and younger the face seemed to grow, brighter and brighter became the eyes, until he began to ask himself whether this witch were using some of her arts upon him, whether there were some elixir in the champagne to turn old women into young ones, or to dazzle the eyes of young men.
Remembering that he had an important matter to discuss with her, for he felt sure he should meet with opposition in his determination to leave her service, Welton was very abstemious and kept strict watch upon his own tongue in spite of all Miss Ferriby's endeavours to draw him out. He had formed a very strong opinion as to the witch's powers, and was determined to hold his own with her, and not to be cajoled into continuing to occupy a position which he felt to be as unsatisfactory as it was insecure.
When dinner was over, Miss Ferriby asked him if he was fond of music, and upon his replying that he was, she led the way into the drawing room, and seating herself at the grand piano in its dainty painted case which he had admired on his first visit to the house, she played and sang to him so charmingly that he marvelled how a woman so old and so misshapen could draw such sweet sounds from the instrument, and retain the freshness of her own voice so long.
He expressed his delight in no measured terms, and Miss Ferriby, still in the same mood of vivacity and gentleness which had charmed him at dinner, and made him feel double pity for her deformity, left the piano, and seating herself on a sofa near the chair on which he was sitting near the fire, she leaned back and gave a little sigh.
"Ah!" she said, "it's all very well; you like my playing and my singing, but all the while you were thinking what a pity it is such gifts as I possess were not those of a young, handsome woman with a fine figure and a pretty face."
Welton was startled by the shrewdness of the remark, and although he vehemently denied that he had held any such thoughts, the quiet smile with which she received his protests only emphasized the truth of her words.
There was still a gentleness, almost a sweetness, in her manner which encouraged him to think that now that business hours were past and she could be what he supposed to be her natural self, she would listen with sympathy and interest to the statement which he would have to make, and would consent to let him off further attendance.
Full of this idea, he was very attentive and deferential, full of enthusiasm about her music, and delighted to find her so much pleased at his own real appreciation of her accomplishments.
"If you will stay to dine with me again tomorrow," she presently said, "I will get out some more of my old songs, since they please you so much, and tune my harp to accompany myself with."
At once Welton grew nervous. Here was his opportunity; he must make the most of it. Coughing from sheer fright, and growing red and obviously awkward, he said, "It is very good of you, Miss Ferriby, and I should have been delighted. But unfortunately I have an appointment for tomorrow which I must keep. And if you can let me off further attendance, and can forgive my not having given you notice, I should be very grateful, as I have heard of a post abroad which my people think I ought to accept, if I can."
It was terribly abrupt, tactless, awkward, stupid. He felt that himself, after all his thought and all his preparation. Miss Ferriby looked astounded.
For a few moments she sat still, aghast at his audacity, perhaps at his ingratitude. Then she turned slowly towards him, and he was struck with horror to see that her eyes were full of tears. And yet in spite of that fact, he had an idea that it was anger as much as sorrow that possessed her as she said, after a long-drawn breath, "I see. I've frightened you. Is it my beauty, or is it my too great confidence in you which has alarmed you and made you decide to take flight? Oh, don't shake your head, and don't give yourself the trouble of inventing silly tales which no one could believe for a moment. You want to cease to come here. You are tired already, or discontented, or overworked, perhaps. Or perhaps you think I've not treated you well enough. Never mind the reason. You want to go. I, a poor lonely old woman who thought that at last I had found, in the man who saved me from a couple of thieves, someone whom I could trust, and whose fortune I could perhaps help to make -- have made a mistake. You are not well enough treated here. You want to go. Well, well, I can't detain you. I can't force you to come back if you are unwilling. I... I..."
To his horror she covered her face with her jewelled hands and sobbed bitterly.
Terribly distressed by this unexpected scene, Welton tried in vain to persuade her that he was only moved by considerations which had nothing to do with her or her household. He felt how feeble his words sounded, how inadequate his reasons were.
Suddenly Miss Ferriby sat up, and fixing upon him that steady penetrating gaze which seemed to read thought as if she had an open book before her, she said, "If you feel, as you say, that you are behaving badly to me, why do you do it? Why don't you do the proper thing and give me a month's notice? I will take that if you like. I must, I suppose. But don't, now that I've let you get into my ways, that I've told you my innocent little secrets, that I've learnt to have confidence in you, and that I've found you intelligent, sympathetic, all that I wish, don't throw me over, leave me in the lurch. Give me just time to find another secretary. Do, Welton, do."
It was impossible for him to resist such earnest pleading, even though he felt persuaded in his heart of hearts that he was doing a foolish and dangerous thing in consenting.
He agreed, therefore, to give her the month's work asked for, and then he saw at once by a light in her eyes, which he could not have described, that he had made another false move. In spite of her gentleness, her winning ways, he felt strongly that the woman was dangerous, and that the sooner he broke off all communication with her, the better it would be for him.
In the meantime, she had no sooner gained her point than she became once more the fascinating, gentle woman she had been before his words disturbed her equanimity. And he felt when he went away that night that the empire she had gained over her dupes as a seer was not surprising, since he himself had felt the influence of her strong will and masculine mind, which made his own resolution melt like wax before the fire of hers.
His brother was in a state of great excitement over his invitation to stay and dine with Miss Ferriby, and it went to Welton's heart to have to disappoint the lad, who had at once made up his mind that his brother was, as he put it, "In for a good thing."
"I suppose the old lady's taken a fancy to you, and if so, perhaps she'll leave you all her money," suggested Basil, full of a theory which had immediately possessed him when he heard that his brother wanted his dress clothes.
Welton shook his head. "Not a bit of it," he said. "The fact is, Basil, I don't like the post a bit, and I want to get out of it, and Miss Ferriby won't let me. And there's nothing I wish less than that she should take a fancy to me, as you call it."
And he at once proceeded to tell his brother the whole story of his day's adventures without, however, succeeding in impressing the younger with the same sense of fear and suspicion with which the household at The Lawns and Miss Ferriby herself inspired him.
Basil looked upon the fortune-telling as jolly good fun, and failed to understand how seriously it was taken by Miss Ferriby's dupes. "And if she gives all the money she makes by it to charities, and if she makes as much by it as you say, why, all I can say is the charities in question may well wink the other eye over the way she makes it."
Welton shifted his position uneasily. "Ah, but there's another thing," he said, instinctively lowering his voice as he drew nearer to his brother. "She says again and again that she gives all the money she makes by fortune-telling to cha
rities. But I've gone over all her letters and her books too, and reckoning up the sums she's collected from benevolent people on the one hand, and the sums she's handed over to charitable institutions on the other, I find that they exactly balance each other, and I can't find any trace of all this money of her own, although it must be between one hundred and fifty and two hundred pounds a day. It begins to look to me," added Welton, lowering his voice still more, "as if Miss Ferriby's were the sort of charity that begins at home -- and ends there!