"Spare me, Olivia!—I scarce know what I say—and do not be angry."

She drew her hands coldly and haughtily away from his grasp. She was a thoroughly proud woman, and his secrecy stung her.

"I am not angry, Sir Jasper. Keep your secret, if you will. I was foolish enough to fancy I had right to know of any danger that menaces my baby, but it appears I was mistaken. In half an hour the carriages will start for the church. You will find us all in the nursery."

She was sweeping proudly away in silent anger, but the baronet strode after her and caught her arm.

"You will know this!" he said, huskily. "Olivia, Olivia! you are cruel to yourself and to me, but you shall hear—part, at least. I warn you, however, you will be no happier for knowing."

"Go on," she said, steadily.

He turned from her, walked to the window, and kept his back to her while he spoke.

"You have no faith in fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers, and the like, have you, Olivia?"

"Most certainly not!"

"Then what I have to say will scarcely trouble you as it troubles me—for I believe; and the prediction of an astrologer has ruined my peace for the past month."

"Is that all? The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse. My dear Sir Jasper, how can you be so simply credulous?"

"I knew you would laugh," said Sir Jasper, moodily; "I said so. But laugh if you can. I believe!"

"Was the prediction very terrible, then?" asked his wife, with a smile.
"Pray tell me all about it."

"It was terrible," her husband replied, sternly. "The living horror it has cast over me might have told you that. Listen, Olivia! On that night of our baby boy's birth, after I left you and came here, I stood by this window and saw a spectral face gleaming through the glass. It was the face of a man—a belated wayfarer—who adjured me, in the Savior's name, to let him in."

"Well, you let him in, I suppose?"

"I let him in—a strange-looking object, Olivia, like no creature I ever saw before, with flowing beard and hair silver-white—"

"False, no doubt."

"He wore a long, disguising cloak and a skull-cap," went on Sir Jasper, "and his face was blanched to a dull dead white. He would have looked like a resuscitated corpse, only for a pair of burning black eyes."

"Quite a startling apparition! Melodramatic in the extreme! And this singular being—what was he? Clairvoyant, astrologer, what?"

"Astrologer—an Eastern astrologer—Achmet by name."

"And who, probably, never was further than London in his life-time. A well-got-up charlatan, no doubt."

"Charlatan he may have been; Englishman he was not. His face, his speech, convinced me of that. And, Olivia, charlatan or no, he told me my past life as truly as I knew it myself."

Lady Kingsland listened with a quiet smile.

"No doubt he has been talking to the good people of the village and to the servants in the house."

"Neither the people of the village nor the servants of the house know aught of what he told me. He showed me what transpired twenty years ago.

"Twenty years ago?"

"Yes, when I was fresh from Cambridge, and making my first tour. Events that occurred in Spain—that no one under heaven save myself can know of—he told me."

"That was strange!"

"Olivia, it was astounding—incomprehensible! I should never have credited one word he said but for that. He told me the past as I know it myself. Events that transpired in a far foreign land a score of years ago, known, as I thought, to no creature under heaven, he told me of as if they had transpired yesterday. The very thoughts that I thought in that by-gone time he revealed as if my heart lay open before him. How, then, could I doubt? If he could lift the veil of the irrevocable past, why not be able to lift the veil of the mysterious future? He took the hour of our child's birth and ascended to the battlements, and there, alone with the stars of heaven, he cast his horoscope. Olivia, men in all ages have believed in this power of astrology, and I believe as firmly as I believe in Heaven."

Lady Kingsland listened, and that quiet smile of half amusement, half contempt never left her lips.

"And the horoscope proved a horrorscope, no doubt," she said, the smile deepening. "You paid your astrologer handsomely, I presume, Sir Jasper?"

"I gave him nothing. He would take nothing—not even a cup of water. Of his own free will he cast the horoscope, and, without reward of any kind, went his way when he had done."

"What did you say the name was?"

"Achmet the Astrologer."

"Melodramatic again! And now, Sir Jasper, what awful fate betides our boy?"

"Ask me not! You do not believe. What the astrologer foretold I shall tell no one."

"The carriage waits, my lady," a servant said, entering. "Lady Helen bade me remind you, my lady, it is time to start for church."

Lady Kingsland hastily glanced at her watch.

"Why, so it is! I had nearly forgotten. Come, Sir Jasper, and forget your fears on this happy day."

She led him from the room. Baby, in its christening-robes, slept in nurse's arms, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon stood impatiently waiting.

"We will certainly be late!" Lady Helen, who was god-mamma, said, fussily. "Had we not better depart at once, Sir Jasper?"

"I am quite at your ladyship's service. We will not delay an instant longer. Proceed, nurse."

Nurse, with her precious burden, went before. Sir Jasper drew Lady
Helen's arm within his own, and Mr. Carlyon followed with little
Mildred Kingsland.

Lady Kingsland watched the carriage out of sight, and then went slowly and thoughtfully back to her room.

"How extremely foolish and weak of Sir Jasper," she was thinking, "to pay the slightest attention to the canting nonsense of these fortune-telling impostors! If I had been in his place I would have had him horsewhipped from my gates for his pains. I must find out what this terrible prediction was and laugh it out of my husband's mind."

Meantime the carriage rolled down the long avenue, under the majestic copper-beeches, through the lofty gates, and along the bright sunlit road leading to the village.

In stole and surplice, within the village church, the Reverend Cyrus Green, Rector of Stonehaven, stood by the baptismal font, waiting to baptize the heir of all the Kingslands.

Stately, Sir Jasper Kingsland strode up the aisle, with Lady Helen upon his arm. No trace of the trouble within showed in his pale face as he heard his son baptized Everard Jasper Carew Kingsland.

The ceremony was over. Nurse took the infant baronet again; Lady Helen adjusted her mantle, and the Reverend Cyrus Green was blandly offering his congratulations to the greatest man in the parish, when a sudden commotion at the door startled all. Some one striving to enter, and some other one refusing admission.

"Let me in, I tell you!" cried a shrill, piercing voice—the voice of an angry woman. "Stand aside, woman! I will see Sir Jasper Kingsland."

With the last ringing words the intruder burst past the pew-opener, and rushed wildly into the church. A weird and unearthly figure—like one of Macbeth's