The Argosy — page 228: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Featherston’s Story. 211 _ Ves, sir, they are,” replied the Signor, with marked emphasis. | “J never saw the cards so unpropitious in my life.” | Nancy took up the cards, shuffled them well, and cut them ‘three times. Signor Talcke laid them out as before, bent his head, | and looked attentively at them. He did not speak, but there was no | | mistaking the vexed, pained and puzzled look on his face. , | Ido not think he knew Nancy, even by name. I do not think he knew me, or had the least notion that we were related. Neither of us had ever met him before. He put his hand to his brow, still gazing at the cards, _ “But when are you going to begin my fortune, sir?” broke in | Nancy. } ‘J would rather not tell it at all, madame,” he answered. “Cannot you tell it?—have your powers of forecasting incon- , veniently run away ?” said she incautiously, her tone mocking in her _ disappointment. : ! ' “T could tell it, all too surely ; but you might not like to hear it,” | | returned he. | Our magician has lost his divining rod just when he needed it,” observed a gentleman with a grey beard, a stranger to me, who was i | standing opposite, speaking in a tone of ill-natured satire; and a laugh went round. | _ Jt is not that,” said the Signor, keeping his temper perfectly. “I could tell what the cards say, all too certainly ; but it would not give | satisfaction.” | “Oh, yes, it would,” said Nancy. ‘I should like to hear it, every } | bit of it. Please do begin.” “The cards are dark; very dark indeed,” he said; ‘I don’t i } remember ever to have seen them like it. Each time they have been _ turned, the darkness has increased. Vothzng can show worse than ) they do now.” | “Never mind that,” gaily returned Ann. ‘You undertook to tell | } my fortune, sir; and you ought not to make excuses in the middle \ ) of it. Let the cards be as dark as night, we must hear what } ) they say.” | He drew in his thin lips for a moment, and then spoke, his tone quiet, calm, unemotional. i | te “Some great evil threatens you,” he began; “‘you seem to be ; living in the midst of it. It is not only you that it threatens; there i } ts another also——” ‘Oh, my goodness,” interrupted Nancy, in her childish way. “I } hope it does not threaten Edwin! What zs the evil? Sickness ?” | “Worse than that. It—it———” Signor Talcke’s attention was so ) absorbed by the aspect of the cards, that, as it struck me, he ap- | peared hardly to heed what he was saying. He had a long, thin, _ black pencil in his long, thin fingers, and kept pointing to different | Cards as if in accordance with his thoughts, but not touching them. ‘| | | { GOMIGIOOKSAGO