No eyes were ever like those, I
thought, except the eyes of a gipsy.
"What are you doing?" I stammered, in French, hardly expecting her to
understand and answer me; but she replied in an old, cracked voice that
sounded hollow and unreal in the cavern.
"I have been asleep," she said. "I am waiting for my sons. We are in Les
Baux on business. I thought, when I heard you, it was my boys coming to
fetch me. I can't go till they are here, because I have dropped my
rosary with a silver crucifix down below, and the way is too steep for
me. They must get it."
"Do they know you are here?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she returned. "They will come at six. We shall perhaps have
our supper and sleep in this house to-night. Then we will go away in the
morning."
"It is only a little after five now," I told her. "You frightened me at
first."
She cackled a laugh. "I am nothing to be afraid of," she chuckled. "I am
very old. Besides, there is no harm in me. If you have the time, I could
tell your fortune."
"I'm afraid I haven't time," I said, though I was tempted. To have
one's fortune told in a cavern under a rock house where Romans had
lived, told by a real, live gipsy who looked as if she might be a lineal
descendant from Taven, and who was probably fresh from worshipping at
the tomb of Sarah! It would be an experience.
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