His voice was rich and mellow, yet something of harshness in its tones betrayed the discord within.
"What do you mean by that?" asked Waif, her black eyebrows coming down in an angry scowl over her black eyes.
"You can interpret it for yourself," was his answer. "Thyra, do you remember the red Quantock hills, and the deep leafy coombes in the 'broom-pickers' country' long ago?"
He spoke in Romany, and she replied in the same language. It stung him to observe that she could not express herself so readily in their own gipsy tongue as in that of the Gentiles, with whom she had passed so many years.
"I remember," said Waif, carelessly. "What of that?"
He looked hurt, and a fierce gleam shot from his dark eyes.
"There was a little gipsy-girl on those red hills," he answered, "who came to her gipsy-boy for every earthly thing she wanted, from a bunch of violets in the ditch to a bit of mistletoe on the topmost branch of the old oak-tree, who stretched her little arms for him to carry her on the tramp when she was tired, who stroked his face every morning at sunrise, and kissed him every night when he lay down to sleep.
"For that little lass the gipsy-boy would have shed all the blood in his young body, and he was but ten years old and five—not yet a man, nor grown to man's stature, but a man in heart, and a giant in his love for the comely, delicate gipsy-girl. So he begged hard of father and mother, uncles and aunts, and he went into her tent with a gift, and prayed of her people that they would give him Thyra to be his wife. They promised, Thyra, do you remember? They promised. They were of the old black race, and the promise of a Lovel is like the oath of a Stanley or a Lee."
"It was so long ago!" pleaded Waif, in rather a trembling voice. "You were always very good to me, Fin. I won't deny it; but it was so long ago!"