The taunt, if meant for such, was lost on her husband. "Two hours," he yawned; "two hours all but five minutes at the best. How shall we get through two mortal hours? There is moonlight—that's a comfort; and our friends have left us the cards. I will sit in the coach, and play your ladyship a game at picquet."
"What shall we play for?" said my lady.
"For love!" said my lord, and began to deal.
[CHAPTER XII.]
MARY LEE.
Threading like a herd of red deer the slight undulations of the down, it took the gipsies but a few minutes to withdraw from the scene of their late outrage. In less than an hour they had approached their own camping-ground, where the tents were already pitched by wives and comrades, the kettles already singing over the twinkling fires of their bivouac. They travelled fast, at a long swinging trot, shifting their bundles from one to another as they went. Fin Cooper and Waif remained in rear of the party, the former arguing that it was the post of danger, and, on this consideration, though she seemed unwilling to lag behind the others, insisting that the girl should bear him company.
Waif was anxious and preoccupied, strangely unlike herself. The black Vardo-mescro had not failed to notice the change, nor was it in his nature to keep silence when aroused. Looking suspiciously in his companion's face, he sang a scrap of an old Romany ditty, that may be thus rendered:—
"In the month of flowers, between the showers, the cuckoo sings all day.
But the maiden weeps, while the Romany sleeps, and the Gorgio gallops away.
Too soon, too soon, they are fading in June, and the cuckoo has changed his say.
And the maiden is dead, and the spring-time fled, when the Gorgio galloped away."