“Your very good cousin,
“DIANA LEYTON.”
He crammed the letter into his pocket, and sat there, appalled. It must have lain two days under that bust! Had Gyp seen it? He looked at the bronze face; and the philosopher looked back from the hollows of his eyes, as if to say: “What do you know of the human heart, my boy—your own, your mistress's, that girl's, or anyone's? A pretty dance the heart will lead you yet! Put it in a packet, tie it round with string, seal it up, drop it in a drawer, lock the drawer! And to-morrow it will be out and skipping on its wrappings. Ho! Ho!” And Summerhay thought: 'You old goat. You never had one!' In the room above, Gyp would still be standing as he had left her, putting the last touch to her hair—a man would be a scoundrel who, even in thought, could—“Hallo!” the eyes of the bust seemed to say. “Pity! That's queer, isn't it? Why not pity that red-haired girl, with the skin so white that it burns you, and the eyes so brown that they burn you—don't they?” Old Satan! Gyp had his heart; no one in the world would ever take it from her!
And in the chair where she had sat last night conjuring up memories, he too now conjured. How he had loved her, did love her! She would always be what she was and had been to him. And the sage's mouth seemed to twist before him with the words: “Quite so, my dear! But the heart's very funny—very—capacious!” A tiny sound made him turn.
Little Gyp was standing in the doorway.
“Hallo!” he said.
“Hallo, Baryn!” She came flying to him, and he caught her up so that she stood on his knees with the sunlight shining on her fluffed out hair.
“Well, Gipsy! Who's getting a tall girl?”
“I'm goin' to ride.”
“Ho, ho!”