"I did not. I can trust you to see that my wife and Lambert do not meet without spying myself."
"If you love and trust your wife so entirely, I wonder you ask me to spy on her at all," said Silver with a faint sneer.
"She is a woman, and we gypsies have sufficient of the Oriental in us to mistrust even the most honest women. Lambert has not been to The Manor?"
"No. That's a bad sign. He can't trust himself in her presence."
"I'll choke the life out of you, rat that you are, if you talk in such a way about my wife. What you think doesn't matter. Hold your tongue, and come to business. I asked you here to take my instructions."
Silver was rather cowed by this outburst, as he was cunning enough to know precisely how far he could venture with safety. "I am waiting," he observed in sullen tones.
"Garvington—as I knew he would—has ordered us off the land. As the wood is really mine, since I hold it as security, having paid off the mortgage, I don't choose that he should deal with it as though it were his own. Here"—he passed along a letter—"I have written that on my office paper, and you will see that it says, I have heard how gypsies are camping here, and that it is my wish they should remain. Garvington is not to order them off on any pretext whatsoever. You understand?"
"Yes." Silver nodded, and slipped the paper into his breast pocket after a hasty glance at the contents, which were those the writer had stated. "But if Garvington wishes to know why you take such an interest in the gypsies, what am I to say?"
"Say nothing. Simply do what I have told you."
"Garvington may suspect that you are a Romany."