again.

"Oh, I'll not forget," he answered, and waved his cap after her. "No,
I'll not forget monsieur," he added sharply, and he stepped out with a
light of battle in his eyes.

CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE

As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things
which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour
came and went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and
intimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life.

Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place
apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as
a child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she
fell under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the
Sagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of
her own separateness which was the position of every girl in the West,
but developed in her own case to the nth degree.

Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned
a man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her
inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these
always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long
she had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and
the secrecy and strangeness of her father's course had made this not
only possible, but in a sense imperative.

The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression,
were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful
of days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come
into her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby
came for good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted
at the suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good.

Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again
towards the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than
herself had ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant
of herself awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards
him, he had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the
distance. He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the
attention of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion
and perhaps punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to
him. First and last he was a Romany, go