"'It is well with her,' was all he said, 'but you will see Mary in our tents no more.'
"'She is dead!' burst from my lips, for there seemed a smell of blood in my nostrils, and the pale streaks of dawn grew crimson between the trees.
"'It is well with her,' he repeated, turning from me into his tent. 'Mary Lee has left her people--dead or alive we shall see her no more.'
"Then I knew she had paid the price it costs the Romany maiden who loves a Gorgio too well!"
Waif had changed colour more than once during the above recital; but though she looked very pale now, there was a firm, hard expression in her face that denoted some fixed purpose no consideration should set aside.
"'The hawk does not mate with the barn-door fowl,' said she, 'and the Romany chal marries with the Romany chi, for surely we are one people; but this affects neither you nor me, Fin. If gipsies cannot trust each other, how shall we hold our own against the Gentiles? Mary Lee was a good-for-nothing hussey; Uncle Ryley a cruel, blood-thirsty monster; and here we are at the camp. Take your bundle, Fin, I've carried it till I'm tired. Yes; I'll shake hands with you. Good-night.'"
Extricating herself impatiently from the embrace of her affianced husband, who succeeded, however, in pressing his lips against her brow, she disappeared within one of the tents, leaving Fin Cooper outside, a prey to contending feelings, among which jealousy and suspicion were in the ascendant. He loved the girl: of that he was quite sure, and in such a character, love is a fearful motive power for good or evil. It possesses also a keen instinct of reciprocity, not to be deceived, and few conditions are more pitiable than that of a strong wilful temperament, persuading itself, against its own convictions, that it is not exchanging gold for silver, that the ship which carries its whole freight is not sinking hourly beneath its feet.
The gipsy would have been angered, even to baring of steel, by any comrade who had warned him of that which his heart began to tell him too plainly, though he dared not admit it to himself, who had hinted that Thyra loved another, and that other, one of the forbidden race--which, for all his Romany pride and Romany prejudices, he could not but acknowledge superior in every respect to his own. But he knew it, nevertheless, and only waited an opportunity to avenge himself on the rival, whom he had identified, almost to certainty, with John Garnet, _alias_ Galloping Jack, the highwayman. Even now, he thought it might not be too late to detach Waif from her unworthy and impossible attachment. Far into the night Fin Cooper tossed and turned from side to side, restless and sleepless, because of his wrongs, his memories, and his feverish longing to have his hand on John Garnet's throat.