I Read Their Tragic Fates, and My Family Reads My Mind?

"My brother only avoided a fatal accident because of her warning. He still got into a car crash, but he only had some cuts and bruises and a broken leg. That he’s safe is a blessing in this unfortunate situation."

This piqued the interest of Mrs. Sherwood and the others. They gave Melanie Yates encouraging looks, hoping she would continue her story.

Melanie Yates took a deep breath. She left out the fact that her brother had gotten into the car accident after going drinking to drown his sorrows, all because he’d accidentally discovered Cassandra Lynch was treating him as a backup boyfriend. She simply recounted the general course of events.

Hearing this, Ms. Kerr grew even more certain of her suspicions. She sighed and said, "Forgive me for being blunt, but although Master Donovan and that Miss Donovan haven’t known each other for long, and their situation is what it is... I can see with my own two eyes that they have a strong bond. They’re very close in their daily lives, and with The Donovan Family helping things along, their feelings for each other will only grow stronger and deeper. If the Lynch Family really gets involved with Miss Donovan, who’s to say which family will be considered the one marrying up in the future?"

Mrs. Sherwood was no fool. How could she not realize Ms. Kerr’s words were aimed at her?

Businesspeople these days were all at least a little superstitious. If Arabella Donovan truly had such abilities, the number of people seeking her out in the future would only grow.

As her acknowledged older sister, Eloise Donovan might very well look down on the Lynch Family’s little patch of influence.

Mrs. Sherwood, who already felt a natural fondness for Eloise Donovan because of her face, took a deep breath. She felt it was increasingly likely that Eloise was truly her dear friend’s biological daughter!

After seeing Ms. Kerr and her friends off, it dawned on Mrs. Sherwood that her own son was one of the people Arabella Donovan had helped.

She immediately turned to look at him. "What did that Master Donovan say to you just now? And what was that conflict you had earlier about?"

As soon as she finished asking, she recalled the conversation from just a moment ago, and her expression changed. "Was it about Cassandra?"

Gregory Sherwood had intended to tell his mother the truth, so now that she was asking, he no longer held back. "Yes, it was about her."

Gregory Sherwood repeated what Arabella Donovan had said that day. After listening, Mrs. Sherwood stumbled and nearly fell.

Gregory Sherwood quickly steadied her, wanting to take her inside to rest, but Mrs. Sherwood stopped him.

"Is all of this true?"

"She’s certainly very close with quite a few men, and she often says misleading things that cause people to misunderstand."

"That doesn’t prove she’s seeing multiple men at once."

"But she does have a boyfriend."

"She has a boyfriend?" Mrs. Sherwood was devastated. "She has a boyfriend and still..."

Mrs. Sherwood was about to demand why, if Cassandra Lynch had a boyfriend, she kept coming over to their house and saying such misleading things. But then she recalled Gregory’s words, and her face turned crimson as she held back her fury.

Gregory Sherwood worried his mother would make herself ill with anger, but he also believed it was better to endure a short, sharp pain than a long, dull one. The sooner she knew Cassandra’s true nature, the sooner she could harden her heart and cut her losses.

"Besides this boyfriend, she’s involved with several other men. I ran into one of them before. She told me he was just pursuing her relentlessly on his own, but I later found out she accepted every gift he sent and never explicitly rejected him. I imagine he, just like you, thought her actions meant she was interested."

Mrs. Sherwood trembled with rage. Before this, even when she suspected she might be mistaken about her dear friend’s daughter, it had only been a subconscious fondness for Eloise Donovan.

She couldn’t bear to be harsh or distance herself from Cassandra Lynch, the girl she had cherished for so many years.

But now that she knew the girl’s true nature, Mrs. Sherwood could only hate herself for being so blind all these years. To think she had been deceived for so long and had nearly brought a living nightmare into the family for her son!

"So your sudden coldness toward her recently... was it because you found out about all this?"

"Yes."

"Why didn’t you tell me?"

Gregory Sherwood answered with silence, but Mrs. Sherwood had already guessed why.

’It was true.’ If she hadn’t seen Eloise Donovan today, who looked so much like her old friend, and heard Ms. Kerr and the others describe Arabella Donovan’s mystical abilities, how could she have ever been willing to believe that the person she’d favored for so many years was secretly such a person?

The thought of Eloise Donovan slightly soothed Mrs. Sherwood’s battered heart. Her gaze, when it fell on Gregory Sherwood, was filled with disappointment that he hadn’t lived up to her expectations.

"It’s not as if you never met your Miss Sullivan when you were a child. Why didn’t you recognize Eloise at all when you saw her the other day? You even started a conflict with her. Honestly, child, I don’t know what to say to you."

Gregory Sherwood felt completely wronged. He had indeed met Rona Sullivan as a child, but he’d been very young when she passed away, just when he was beginning to form lasting memories. He vaguely recalled a very cheerful aunt who loved to laugh, and most importantly...

"For all these years, you never allowed any photos of Miss Sullivan to be displayed prominently in the house. I haven’t seen her face in over a decade, so how could I possibly have recognized her at first glance?"

Mrs. Sherwood was left speechless. Their family lived close to the Lynch Family, and once Cassandra Lynch got a little older, she loved coming over to their house to play.

Mrs. Sherwood had been worried that Cassandra would see Rona Sullivan’s photos at the Sherwood house and be saddened by the reminder. That’s why she had all the pictures moved to her own room, only taking them out to look at when she was reminiscing. She never imagined that, over a decade later, this would cause such a blunder.

"Good thing you reacted quickly just now. Otherwise, clashing with her during your very first meeting... she definitely wouldn’t have a good impression of you."

Alarm bells went off in Gregory Sherwood’s mind. ’Mom isn’t thinking of playing matchmaker again, is she?’

Mrs. Sherwood rolled her eyes at him. After this incident with Cassandra Lynch, she was feeling a bit ’once bitten, twice shy’ and couldn’t be bothered to interfere in the younger generation’s business anymore.

"Of course not. I was just thinking that if she really is your Miss Sullivan’s biological daughter, you can help me look after her from now on."

Gregory Sherwood breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time, a headache was brewing.

He thought of how that Donovan brother had been guarding against him as if he were a thief. ’It’s not like they’d want me looking after her anyway,’ he thought.

Eloise Donovan’s appearance at the Lynch Family’s banquet had an immediate and obvious effect.

The next day, Arabella Donovan woke up to find her perception of the world had completely changed. For anyone she met, if she held their gaze for more than three seconds, she could see their basic current circumstances.

In essence: white meant an uneventful, mediocre life; blue meant everything was going smoothly; yellow indicated minor physical or psychological ailments; gold represented a pleasant surprise; purple meant help from a benefactor; and as for green... well, that one was self-explanatory.

Pink represented the stirring of the Red Simurgh Star—romance. If it was one’s destined partner, the color would be a faint pink. If not, the edges of the pink would often be tinged with another color.

Other colors were fine, but if the pink was mixed with red, one had to be cautious. Red signified a disaster involving bloodshed—the deeper the red, the more severe. Pink tinged with red often meant the romance had developed into a "peach blossom calamity," a love affair destined for disaster, just like with Ivan Yates and Kieran Kerr.

Beyond that, Arabella could occasionally see some people’s threads of marriage and career.

But it was a rare occurrence, happening with only one or two people. Arabella guessed it was probably because she hadn’t accumulated enough Merit yet.

Furthermore, to see a thread of marriage, both of the connected individuals generally had to be standing in front of her.

Like, for instance, the two people standing before her right now.