Then again, they've all got most extraordinary intuition--a perfectly
marvellous gift of reading faces. By George, sir," the Colonel
exclaimed, growing hot and red at the memory of that afternoon on
the Holkers' lawn, "I don't like to see those women's eyes fixed
upon my cheek when there's anything going on I don't want them to
know. A man's transparent like glass before them. They see into
his very soul. They look right through him."
"If the lady who founded the family habits was a fortune-teller,"
the manager interposed, with a scientific air, "that's not so
remarkable; for fortune-tellers must always be quick-witted people,
keen to perceive the changes of countenance in the dupes who employ
them, and prompt at humouring all the fads and fancies of their
customers, mustn't they?"
"Quite so," the Colonel echoed. "You've hit it on the nail. And
this particular lady--Esmeralda they call her, so that Elma, which
is short for Esmeralda, understand, has come to be the regular
Christian name among all her women descendants--this particular
lady belonged to what you might call a caste or priestly family,
as it were, of hereditary fortune-tellers, every one of whose
ancestors had been specially selected for generations for the work,
till a kind of transmissible mesmeric habit got developed among
them.
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