Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

32 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE seemed treble their size to the lonely, woebegone lady of the manor. The formal gardens were forbidding and cold; even the flowers flaunted their garish colors distastefully. In other words, a world had gone awry for Ernest Vane's young wife. "If he would only write to me," she mused, as she wandered aimlessly up one path and down another, "I could bear the absence of his kiss, his caress, but I cannot bear this utter, utter silence ! ■ ' ' ' Cross my palm with siller, lady ! ' ' interrupted a curiously pitched voice. "I have a fortune for ye, mistress; the truth or falsity of your love ; the end of your life ; the beginning of it. Cross with siller, mistress ! ' ' Mabel frowned slightly at the gypsy woman; then some canny look in the creature's beady eyes changed her. "I might as well," she halflaughed. "Time does not go too swiftly, methinks." Taking out her tiny, bead-work purse, she crossed the nut-brown hand, then sank on a garden seat. In a droning, half-articulate voice the gypsy woman mumbled fortune-telling platitudes, the like of which have been heard and will continue to be heard so long as the fakers ply their amusing trade; one might say art. Suddenly she sat erect. "Ha!" she ejaculated sharply, "here's something, mistress, I have not seen before. This line tells — yes, tells me — that your love is in need of you, lady, desperate need. Palms do not lie, mistress. He is — let me see — in London Town. Ah, mistress, take the word of an old gypsy and do not tarry. He needs you sore." It was the needful word. Shyly proud, Mabel would not have sought out her delinquent husband without provocation, but the gypsy had said he needed her. What appeal more potent? And she had said palms cannot lie. Every woman who loves has in her the age-old heritage of the love-potion and the sorceress, the haunting wraiths of old superstitions and omens. Mabel was not immune. "I'll go!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "Here's more silver for you, my good woman. Good-day to you!" Watching the tiny, slippered feet flying up the path, Kitty Clive laughed thru her gypsy masquerade. "Even Mistress Peg couldn't have beaten your acting this time, Mistress Kitty, ' ' she exulted ; ' ' hate of her may make you yet." Vane's city residence was ablaze with light. The table in the great dining-hall was resplendent with the Vane plate and groaning under every delicacy known to epicurean man. The wine-cellar had yielded up its rarest vintage. The master of the house was ^giving an elaborate dinner in honor of Mistress Peg Woffington. Silently gliding thru the tower hall and up the great stairs stole a slender, sobbing little figure. It gained the door of its own suite and flung itself on the bed in the darkened, unprepared room. "He said," sobbed the poor, uninvited guest aloud, "he said 'twas business to — to buy me silks and bonbons with. It — it ■ isn't for me." Suddenly the woeful figure sat erect; the tear-dimmed eyes blazed; the drooping lips took on defiant lines. "Dont be a coward, Mistress Mabel Vane," she adjured herself; "put on your prettiest and go to that dinner-party yourself!" Thus it was that the hilarious guests quieted suddenly, and the gentlemen rose to greet a slender, poised little lady, a-shimmer and a-shine. Over Peg Wofiington 's handsome face a tremor passed of pain and hurt and amaze. Over Kitty Clive 's passed a look of hasty triumph. Pomander caught his breath sharply, and Ernest Vane turned deathly white. "Oh, fie, Mr. Vane, a lady — rise and greet her!" came from some of the guests. Ernest Vane cleared his throat and advanced to meet her, gravely kissing the inviting lips. "Ladies and gentlemen, my wife!" he presented her. Peg Wofiington hid the fire in her eyes by the timely arrival of a note.