“Kismet!” he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin, but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered.
“Oh, you’re here, and longing to get at it,” he said pleasantly.
He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted which way his footsteps were tending. “Well, we needn’t lose any time, but will you have a drink and a smoke first?” he added.
He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a half dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while boxes of cigars and cigarettes flanked them. It was the height of modern luxury imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward comment. The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain! Every door would open to him—that was written on his face—unless Fate stepped in and closed all doors!
The door of Fleda’s heart had already been opened, but he had not yet made his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic finger beckoned.
Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby’s invitation to drink. “But I do not drink much when I play,” he remarked. “There’s enough liquor in the head when the fiddle’s in the hand. ‘Dadia’, I do not need the spirit to make the pulses go!”
“As little as you like then, if you’ll only play as well as you did this afternoon,” Ingolby said cheerily. “I will play better,” was the reply.
“On Sarasate’s violin—well, of course.”
“Not only because it is Sarasate’s violin, ‘Kowadji’!”
“Kowadji! Oh, come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn’t mean that you’re an Egyptian or an Arab. Why Arabic—why ‘kowadji’?”