But now all that was changed. The key to the mystery was in Stella’s possession, and her cheeks flushed and her heart beat high with excitement and hope as she recalled the fact that her mother had escaped out of Sir Philip’s power back to her own people, if it was only to die, and that she, Stella, might well do the same. Old Sarah had told her what to do if she needed her help. She had but to place within the hands of Stephen Lee that little old coin, slung on a piece of red silk string, which she still carried about her, and succor would most certainly come.
In an instant she had made a rapid gesture to Stephen, whose eyes were upturned to her window. He glanced quickly round, and nodded; then noted, with the keen eye of a man who spent his life out of doors, the direction taken, in falling, by the little medal as it was cast down by Stella’s hand, caught it in his fingers, slipped it in his pocket, and walked leisurely away, as though nothing had happened.
Stella had just time to close the window and retire from its vicinity, when the maid Ellen returned. Her presence and that of Dakin were detestable to Stella, who could not even weep for Lady Cranstoun’s death free from their curious and vulgar gaze, nor would she ever exchange a word with either of them.
To-day, for the first time, buoyed up by this new hope of escape, she seemed indifferent to the woman’s presence.
Her hope lay in the gypsies, and with all the wild gypsy element in her blood, she was longing to be free.
CHAPTER XIV.
“THE ROMANYS HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN.”
On leaving the terrace before the Chase, Stephen Lee struck immediately into the forest in a northerly direction.
The circumference of the Chase enclosure measured fully ten miles, but there was barely a yard of the space that was not known to the gypsy-bred lad, who had been familiarized with it in bygone poaching days of childhood long before the period when, as a decently dressed and apparently respectable lad, he had applied for and obtained a situation about the dairy farm on the property. Very soon his usefulness caused him to be promoted. He had “ways” with horses, dogs, cows, and sheep; could repair a fence or sow a field, break in a horse or administer medicine to a sick dog, with equal cleverness.
He was, so his fellow-servants decided, inordinately proud and unsociable, for what reason none of them could satisfactorily fathom. He broke in Sir Philip’s hunters and taught Miss Cranstoun to ride, being himself little more than three years older than she. He did not drink, and had, so far as others knew, neither sweetheart nor friends; yet now and then he would mysteriously disappear for hours together, nor would he afterward even attempt to explain his absences.
The evening was closing in as he made his way in and out the undergrowth in a direct cut through the wood; and it was only after more than an hour of very rapid walking that he began to slacken his speed.