“My poor mother—my dear mother!” said the youth, with tears in his dark eyes, "do not give way to this wild grief. Who knows what the future may bring forth?”
She made no reply; but sat with both arms clasped round her knees—her dry, burning, tearless eyes glaring before her on vacancy.
“Do not despair, mother; we may yet meet again. Who knows?” he said, musingly, after a pause.
She turned her red, inflamed eyeballs on him in voiceless inquiry.
“There are such things as breaking chains and escaping, mother.”
Still that lurid, straining gaze, but no reply.
“And I, if it be in the power of man, I shall escape—I shall return, and then—”
He paused, but his eyes finished the sentence. Lucifer, taking his last look of heaven, might have worn just such a look—so full of relentless hate, burning revenge, and undying defiance.
“You may come, but I will never live to see you,” said the gipsy, in a voice so deep, hollow and unnatural, that it seemed issuing from a tomb.
“You will—you must, mother. I have a sacred trust to leave you, for which you must live,” he said impetuously.