“But it loves him; it loves its master,” Ellice said passionately. “It would die for its master, wouldn’t it?”
“Why, I daresay it would, Gipsy,” Johnny said. “But why so excited about it, little girl?”
“If you—if you,” Ellice said, “had the offer of two dogs, the one splendid, a thoroughbred deerhound, graceful, beautiful, fine to look at, but cold and with no love to give its master, and the other—a hideous beast like Rundle’s lurcher—but a beast who could love and die for its master, and dying lick the hand of the master it loved, glad and grateful to—to die for him—which would you have, which would you have, Johnny?”
Johnny was hardly listening. He was looking down the dusky road and seeing in imagination a face, the most beautiful, wonderful face that his world had ever held.
“I don’t know, Gipsy girl,” he said. “I don’t know!”
“No!” Ellice said; and her voice shook and quavered in an unnatural laugh. “You don’t know, Johnny; you don’t know!”
And Connie, who heard and understood, shivered a little at the sound of the girl’s laughter.
CHAPTER XXVIII
“HE DOES NOT LOVE ME NOW”
“Tom,” said Lady Linden, “is by no means a fool, Marjorie.”