The hunchback tapped at the door and whispered through the lock: "Are you there, Flora?"

A woman's voice answered from within--a young voice, a sweet voice, a slightly impatient voice. "Yes," it said.

"Come out," aesop commanded, curtly.

Then the gaudy door of the caravan yielded, and a pretty gypsy girt appeared in the opening. She was dark-haired, she was bright-eyed, she was warmly colored. She seemed to be about eighteen years of age, but her figure already had a rich Spanish fulness and her carriage was swaying and voluptuous. Most men would have been glad enough to stand for a while in adoration of so pleasing a picture, but aesop was not as most men. His att.i.tude to women when they concerned him personally was not of adoration. In this case the girl did not concern him personally, and he had no interest in her youth or her charms save in so far as they might serve the business he had in hand.

The girl looked at him with a little frown, and spoke with a little note of fretfulness in her voice: "So you have come at last. I have been so tired of waiting for you, mewed up in there."

aesop answered her, roughly: "That's my business. Here is a gentleman who wants to speak with you."

As he spoke he beckoned to Peyrolles, who rose from his seat and moved with what he considered to be dignity towards the pair, making great play of cane, great play of handkerchief, great play of jewelled-hilted sword flapping against neatly stockinged leg.

He saluted the gypsy in what he conceived to be the grand manner. "Can you tell fortunes, pretty one?"

The gypsy laughed, and showed good teeth as she did so. "Surely, on the palm or with the cards--all ways."

"Can you tell your own fortune?" Peyrolles questioned, with a faint tinge of malice in the words.

Flora laughed again, and answered, unhesitatingly: "To dance my way through the world, to enjoy myself as much as I can in the sunshine, to please pretty gentlemen, to have money to spend, to wear fine clothes and do nice things and enjoy myself, to laugh often and cry little. That is my fortune, I hope."

Peyrolles shook his head and looked very wise. "Perhaps I can tell you a better fortune."

Flora was impressed by the manner of the grand gentleman, for to her he seemed a grand gentleman. "Tell me, quick!" she entreated.

Peyrolles condescended to explain: "Seventeen years ago a girl of n.o.ble birth, one year old, was stolen from her mother and given to gypsies."

Flora, listening, counted on her fingers: "Seventeen, one, eighteen--why, just my age."

Peyrolles approved. "You are hearing the voice of Nature--excellent."

aesop put in his word: "That mother has been looking for her child ever since."

Peyrolles summed up the situation with a malign smile: "We believe we have found her."

Flora began to catch the drift of the conversation, and was eager for more knowledge. "Go on--go on! I always dreamed of being a great lady."

Peyrolles raised a chastening finger. "Patience, child, patience. The prince, my master, honors the fair to-day in company with a most exalted personage. I will bring him here to see you dance. If he recognizes you, your fortune is made."

Flora questioned, cunningly: "How can he recognize a child of one?"

Peyrolles lifted to his eyes the elaborately laced kerchief he had been carrying in his right hand, and appeared to be a prey to violent emotions. "Your father was his dearest friend," he murmured, in a tearful voice. "He would see his features in you."

Flora clapped her hands. "I hope he will."

aesop, looking cynically from the girl to the man and from the man to the girl, commented, dryly: "I think he will."

Peyrolles considered the interview had lasted long enough. He signed to the girl to retire with the air of a grandee dismissing some va.s.sal.

"Enough. Retire to your van till I come for you."

Flora pouted and pleaded: "Don't be long. I'm tired of being in there."

aesop snapped at her, sharply: "Do as you are told. You are not a princess yet."

The girl frowned, the girl's eyes flashed, but her acquaintance with aesop had given her the thoroughly justifiable impression that he was a man whom it was better to obey, and she retired into the caravan and shut the green-and-red door with a bang behind her.

aesop turned with a questioning grin to Peyrolles. "Well?" he said.

Peyrolles looked approval. "I think she'll do. I'll go and find the prince at once."

"I will go a little way with you," aesop said, more perhaps because he thought his company might exasperate the sham grand man than for any other reason. He knew Peyrolles would think it unbecoming his dignity to be seen in close companionship with the shabbily habited hunchback, hence his display of friendship. As he linked his black arm in the yellow-satin arm of Peyrolles, he added: "I have taken every care to make our tale seem plausible. The gypsies will swear that they stole her seventeen years ago."

Peyrolles nodded, looking askance at him, and wishing that destiny had not compelled him to make use of such an over-familiar agent, and the precious pair went over the bridge together and disappeared from the neighborhood of the little Inn, and the spirit of solitude seemed again to brood over the locality. But it was not suffered to brood for very long. As soon as the voices and the footsteps of Peyrolles and aesop were no longer audible; the green-and-red door of the caravan was again cautiously opened, and cautiously the head of the pretty gypsy girl was thrust out into the air. When she saw that the pair had disappeared, she ran lightly down the steps of the caravan, and, crossing the common, paused under the windows of the Inn, where she began to sing in a sweet, rich voice a verse of a Spanish gypsy song:

"Come to the window, dear; Listen and lean while I say A Romany word in your ear, And whistle your heart away."

XIII

CONFIDENCES

Before she had finished the last line of the verse the curtains of a window in the second story of the Inn parted and another young girl showed herself through the lattice. This girl was dark-haired like the gypsy, and bright-eyed like the gypsy, and, like the gypsy, she seemed to be some eighteen years of age, but beyond these obvious features resemblance ceased. The girl who looked down from the window of the Inn was of a slenderer shape than the gypsy, of a more delicate complexion, of a grace and bearing that suggested different breeding and another race than that of the more exuberant Gitana. The girl at the window spoke in a clear, sweet voice to the singer: "I thought it must be you, Flora."

Flora called back to her: "Come down to me, Gabrielle."

The girl Gabrielle shook her head. "Henri does not wish me to go abroad while he is absent."

Flora made a little face. "Our friends do keep us prisoners. There is not a soul about."

Gabrielle smiled and consented. "I will come for a moment."

She withdrew from the window, and in a few minutes she appeared at the Inn door and joined her impatient friend. Flora kissed her affectionately, and asked, between kisses: "Are you not angry with Henri for keeping you thus caged?"

Gabrielle smiled an amused denial. "How could I be angry with Henri? He has good reasons for his deeds. We are in great danger. We have enemies."

Flora stared at her wild-eyed. "Who are your enemies?"

Gabrielle looked about her, as if to be a.s.sured that no one was within hearing, and then whispered into Flora's ear: "Henri will never tell me, but they hunt us down. Ever since I was a child we have fled from place to place, hiding. I have often been roused at night by clash of swords and Henri's voice, crying: 'I am here!' But his sword is always the strongest, and we have always escaped."

"Surely you will be safe in Paris," Flora said.

Gabrielle sighed. "Why, it seems we dare not enter Paris yet. When we left Madrid in your company Henri told me we were journeying to Paris, but now we linger here outside the walls until Henri has seen some one--I know not who; and while we linger here I must keep in-doors."

Flora looked mischievous. "Perhaps Henri is jealous, and tells this tale to keep you to himself."

Gabrielle sighed again: "Henri only thinks of me as a child."