We did it, and drank the wine. Duffham examined the throat; and told Hyde, for his consolation, that it was not in a state to be trifled with.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Hyde carelessly. “But I don’t want it to be bad to-morrow when I travel, and I thought perhaps you might be able to give me something or other to set it to rights to-night. I start at ten to-morrow morning.”
“Sore throats are not cured so easily,” retorted Duffham. “You must have taken cold.”
Telling him he would send in a gargle and a cooling draught, and that he was to go to bed soon, Duffham rose to leave. Hyde opened the glass-doors of the room that we might pass out that way, and stepped over the threshold with us. Talking with Duffham, he strolled onwards towards the gate.
“About three weeks, I suppose,” he said, in answer to the query of how long he meant to be away. “If Mabel——”
Gliding out of the bushy laurels on one side the path, and planting herself right in front of us, came Ketira the gipsy. Her face looked yellower than ever in the twilight of the summer’s evening; her piercing black eyes fiercer. Hyde was taken aback by the unexpected encounter. He started a step back.
“Where’s my daughter, Hyde Stockhausen?”
“Go away,” he said, in the contemptuous tone one might use to a dog. “I don’t know anything of your daughter.”
“Only tell me where she is, that I may find her. I ask no more.”
“I tell you that I do not know anything of her. You must be mad to think it. Get along with you!”