ed at
Bulsted lodge-gates to ask for a bed under Julia's roof that night. Her
bare legs twinkled in a nimble pace on the way to Durstan Hall, as if
she was determined to keep me in sight. I waved my hand to her. She
stopped. A gipsy's girl's figure is often as good an index to her
mind as her face, and I perceived that she had not taken my greeting
favourably; nor would she advance a step to my repeated beckonings; I
tried hat, handkerchief, purse, in vain. My driver observed that she was
taken with a fit of the obstinacy of 'her lot.' He shouted, 'Silver,'
and then 'Fortune.' She stood looking. The fellow discoursed on the
nature of gipsies. Foxes were kept for hunting, he said; there was
reason in that. Why we kept gipsies none could tell. He once backed a
gipsy prizefighter, who failed to keep his appointment. 'Heart sunk too
low below his belt, sir. You can't reckon on them for performances. And
that same man afterwards fought the gamest fight in the chronicles o'
the Ring! I knew he had it in him. But they're like nothing better than
the weather; you can't put money on 'em and feel safe.' Consequently he
saw no good in them.

'She sticks to her post,' he said, as we turned into the Durstan
grounds. The girl was like a flag-staff on the upper line of heathland.

Heriot was strolling, cigar in mouth, down one of the diminutive alleys
of young fir in this upstart estate. He affected to be prepossessed
by the case between me and Edbury, and would say nothing of his own
affairs, save that he meant to try for service in one of the Continental
armies; he whose susceptible love for his country was almost a malady.
But he had given himself to women it was Cissy this, Trichy that,
and the wiles of a Florence, the spites of an Agatha, duperies,
innocent-seemings, witcheries, reptile-tricks of the fairest of women,
all through his conversation. He had so saturated himself with the
resources, evasions, and desperate cruising of these light creatures
of wind, tide, and tempest, that, like one who has been gazing on the
whirligoround, he saw the whole of women running or only waiting for
a suitable partner to run the giddy ring to perdition and an atoning
pathos.

I cut short one of Heriot's narratives by telling him that this picking
bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning
parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little devil!'
with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parte