‘Yes, there’s a dinner party.’
The gipsy rose and went to the open window. The lighted windows of the Manor House shone across the shadowy depth of park and shrubberies. Those dark eyes of his glittered curiously as he surveyed the scene.
‘I should like to see them feasting and enjoying themselves,’ he said, moving towards the door.
‘You mustn’t go near the house, you mustn’t be seen about the place,’ cried Rebecca, following him hurriedly.
‘Mustn’t I?’ sneered the gipsy. ‘I never learnt the meaning of the word mustn’t. I’ll go and have a peep at your fine ladies and gentlemen—I’m not quite a fool, and I shan’t let them see me—and then come back here for a night’s rest. You needn’t be frightened if I’m rather long. It’ll amuse me to look on at the high jinks through some half-open window. There, don’t look so anxious. I know how to keep myself dark.’
CHAPTER XIII
‘NOW HALF TO THE SETTING MOON HAVE GONE, AND HALF TO THE RISING DAY.’
The dinner party is over, the county families have retired to their several abodes. They are dispersed, like the soft summer mist which has melted from the moorland with the broadening light of the harvest moon.
Madge, Viola, and Lady Cheshunt are assembled in Mrs. Penwyn’s dressing-room, a long, low room, with a wide and deep bow-window at one end, and three other old-fashioned windows, with broad cushioned seats therein—a room made for lounging and pleasant idleness, and half-hours with the best authors. Every variety of the genus easy chair is there, chintz-covered, and blossoming with all the flowers of the garden, as they only bloom upon chintz, large, gorgeous, and unaffected by aphides or blight of any kind. There are tables here and there—gipsy tables, loaded with new books and other trumpery. There is a large Duchesse dressing table in one of the windows, and an antique ebony wardrobe, with richly carved doors, in a convenient recess; but baths, and all the paraphernalia of the toilet, are in a small chamber adjoining; this large apartment being rather a morning-room, or boudoir, than dressing-room proper.
There are water-colour landscapes and little bits of genre on the walls, by famous modern masters; a portrait of Churchill Penwyn, in crayon, hangs over the velvet-covered mantel-board; there are dwarf bookcases containing Madge’s own particular library, the poets, old and new, Scott, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle; altogether the room has just those homely lovable characteristics which make rooms dear to their owners.