"Yes, madam, I have long heard that those fair fingers can
withdraw the curtain of the future, and I have come to see what
Dame Destiny is going to do for me."
"Sir Norman Kingsley is welcome," said the sweet voice, "and
shall see what he desires. There is but one condition, that he
will keep perfectly silent; for if he speaks, the scene he
beholds will vanish. Come forward!"
Sir Norman compressed his lips as closely am if they were forever
hermetically sealed, and came forward accordingly. Leaning over
the edge of the ebony caldron, he found that it contained nothing
more dreadful than water, for he labored under a vague and
unpleasant idea that, like the witches' caldron in Macbeth, it
might be filled with serpents' blood and children's' brains. La
Masque opened her golden casket, and took from it a portion of
red powder, with which it was filled. Casting it into the
caldron, she murmured an invocation in Sanscrit, or Coptic, or
some other unknown tongue, and slowly there arose a dense cloud
of dark-red smoke, that nearly filled the room. Had Sir Norman
ever read the story of Aladdin, he would probably have thought of
it then; but the young courtier did not greatly affect literature
of any kind, and thought of nothing now but of seeing something
when the smoke cleared away.
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