The door was opened part way, and she was sullenly motioned to enter by a tall woman, who slipped behind it so as to be partly unobserved, giving her visitor as she did so a look which certainly would have attracted Stargarde’s attention could she have seen it, so blended with a curious variety of emotions was it.
They were having a quiet carousal Stargarde saw, when she found herself in the room. There was a tearing fire in the stove, and on its red-hot top foamed and bubbled a kettle of boiling water. The windows were tightly closed and draped with dirty garments; a small table, having on it candles, a pack of cards, and a jug of steaming liquor, stood at one side of the room, and beside it sat two men, both foreigners, judging by their swarthy faces and plentiful supply of silky, black hair.
They were very drunk, but the woman was only partly so. The men eyed Stargarde in insulting, brutish curiosity, hurling interjections, remarks, and questions at her in a gibberish which she fortunately could not understand.
She paid little attention to them. Her eyes leaped beyond to the dirty bed on the floor, and held a pair of glittering orbs that she knew belonged to the child of whom she had come in search. She did not wish Zeb to have one instant to herself in which to secrete the pocket-book. The child had pulled about her some of the rags with which she was surrounded, and was sitting up, looking like a wild animal disturbed in its lair.
Stargarde crossed the room quickly and knelt down beside her. “You ran away from me this evening,” she whispered; “see, darling,” and opening a box she showed the child a layer of sweetmeats daintily wrapped in colored paper.
“Take one, Zeb,” she said, and the child silently submitted to have one put in her mouth. “Now I must go,” said Stargarde; “you keep this pretty box, and will you come and see me to-morrow?”
“Mebbe,” said the child sullenly, and taking another sweetmeat.
Stargarde’s heart beat fast. The girl was an enigma to her in her moody self-possession. Perhaps she had not taken the pocket-book. “Goodbye, Zeb,” she murmured, making as though she would rise from the floor. “Have you no present for me? I thought you might have.”
Zeb flashed her a look, half cunning, half admiring. “You’re a quaint one,” she observed in Italian patois; then she displayed her sharp, white teeth in a mirthless smile: “If you’ll give me a kiss.”
Stargarde leaned over and took the child in a capacious embrace, and as she did so, felt something flat slipped into the bosom of her dress. “Is it all there?” she murmured in Zeb’s ear; “you haven’t taken anything out?”