As the day wore on, with show after show drawing record crowds for a village of its size, "Princess Lalla" gazed more often into the shining blue depths of a small sapphire than into the magic depths of her crystal. But perhaps the sapphire had a magic of its own, for never had her audiences been better pleased, never had quarters been thrust so thick and fast upon her.
At half-past nine that night, Gus, the barker, had not quite finished his "spiel" about the Princess Lalla when the girl, whose eyes had been fixed trance-like upon her ring, saw a woman suddenly begin to ascend the steps to the platform. Before her startled eyes had traveled upward to the woman's face Sally knew who it was. For twelve years that big, stiffly corseted, severely dressed body had been as familiar to her as her own. Instinctively, though her blood had turned instantly to ice water in her veins, Sally's right hand closed over her left, to conceal the sapphire. Thelma had not been permitted to keep even a bit of blue glass--
Sally felt as if her flesh were shriveling upon her bones. An actual numbness spread from her shoulders to her fingertips, in anticipation of the shock of feeling the Orphans' Home matron's grip upon them. How many, many times in her twelve years in the orphanage had she been roughly jerked to her feet by those broad, heavy hands, when she had been caught in some minor infringement of Mrs. Stone's stern rules!
Her hands, instinctively clasped so that her precious engagement ring might be hidden from those gimlet-like gray eyes, were so rigid that Sally wondered irrelevantly if they would ever come to life again, to curve their fingers about the magic crystal. But of course she would never "read" the crystal again. She was caught, caught!
"Are you deaf?" Mrs. Stone's harsh voice pierced her numbed hearing as if from a great distance. "I want my fortune told. I've paid my quarter and I don't intend to dilly-dally around here all day."
The relief was so terrific that the girl's body began to tremble all over, but the rigidity of terror had mercifully relaxed, so that she could lift her shaking hands.
Gus, the barker, who always remained upon the platform during her "readings," had long ago arranged a code signal of distress, and now she gave it. Her hands went up to the ridiculous crown of fake jewels that banded her long black hair and adjusted it, tipping it first to the right and then to the left, as if to ease the pressure of its weight upon her forehead.