“It is a call,” she answered—“the call of the heathen.”
An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, half-forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him.
“I’ve a notion to follow her,” he said eagerly, and he took a step in her direction.
Suddenly she turned and came back to him. “Your plans are in danger—don’t forget Felix Marchand,” she said, and then turned from him again.
“Oh, I’ll not forget,” he answered, and waved his cap after her. “No, I’ll not forget monsieur,” he added sharply, and he stepped out with a light of battle in his eyes.
CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE
As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour came and went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and intimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life.
Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as a child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she fell under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the Sagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of her own separateness which was the position of every girl in the West, but developed in her own case to the nth degree.
Never before had she come so near—not to a man, but to what concerned a man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation—these always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the secrecy and strangeness of her father’s course had made this not only possible, but in a sense imperative.