“Merciful heavens!” said Blynn, but not aloud. Nothing in his manner betrayed the slightest hint of anything but entire acquiescence in the policy of meeting gypsies in an unfrequented valley between seven and eight in the morning.
“He teaches me other things, too,” she went on. “I’ve never told this to anyone but you; not a person. We seem so well acquainted—after yesterday. Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you. It’s been a terrible thing to keep to myself. They think—” motioning toward the house—“I pick up French out of books, the way I get most things. I do hammered copper and silver inlay, too; Bardek taught me. But I don’t get practice enough. Bardek says one must give a life to it. He makes beautiful things, and sells them to rich people.”
“Do you pay him?”
“Oh, no!” she smiled in a superior way. “Bardek is above money.”
“Ugh!” thought Blynn. He seemed to remember a dirty, fat man, pounding away on something at the mouth of the ruined paper-mill. He had rings in his ears, and a pair of huge mustachios gave him a villainous air.
“I have tried to give him money. But he stopped all that in no time. He took me inside and showed me a cunning box set in a stone in the mill. It was full of gold—oh!”
The “oh” was uttered with quick anguish. Blynn came swiftly to her chair and raised her head. Tears were flooding her eyes, and her face was screwed up into a horrid attempt to suppress the noise of weeping.
“What is the matter, my dear child?” he asked again and again.
Several times she tried to speak. Evidently from her glances toward the door she feared someone would be aware of a break in her voice; so with heroic efforts she shut back the sobs.
“I have—told! I—have—told! I promised not—to tell. I have told—you. It is—all right—I—know. You would keep—it—a—secret. But it hurts—that—I—have told. Bardek has been—so—good to me. It was—wicked.”