h the shabbily habited hunchback, hence
his display of friendship. As he linked his black arm in the yellow-satin
arm of Peyrolles, he added: "I have taken every care to make our tale
seem plausible. The gypsies will swear that they stole her seventeen
years ago."

Peyrolles nodded, looking askance at him, and wishing that destiny had
not compelled him to make use of such an over-familiar agent, and the
precious pair went over the bridge together and disappeared from the
neighborhood of the little Inn, and the spirit of solitude seemed again
to brood over the locality. But it was not suffered to brood for very
long. As soon as the voices and the footsteps of Peyrolles and AEsop were
no longer audible; the green-and-red door of the caravan was again
cautiously opened, and cautiously the head of the pretty gypsy girl was
thrust out into the air. When she saw that the pair had disappeared, she
ran lightly down the steps of the caravan, and, crossing the common,
paused under the windows of the Inn, where she began to sing in a sweet,
rich voice a verse of a Spanish gypsy song:

"Come to the window, dear;
Listen and lean while I say
A Romany word in your ear,
And whistle your heart away."

XIII

CONFIDENCES

Before she had finished the last line of the verse the curtains of a
window in the second story of the Inn parted and another young girl
showed herself through the lattice. This girl was dark-haired like the
gypsy, and bright-eyed like the gypsy, and, like the gypsy, she seemed to
be some eighteen years of age, but beyond these obvious features
resemblance ceased. The girl who looked down from the window of the Inn
was of a slenderer shape than the gypsy, of a more delicate complexion,
of a grace and bearing that suggested different breeding and another race
than that of the more exuberant Gitana. The girl at the window spoke in a
clear, sweet voice to the singer: "I thought it must be you, Flora."

Flora called back to her: "Come down to me, Gabrielle."

The girl Gabrielle shook her head. "Henri does not wish me to go abroad
while he is absent."

Flora made a little face. "Our friends do keep us prisoners. There is not
a soul about."

Gabrielle smiled and consented. "I will come for a moment."

She withdrew from the window, and in a few minutes she appeared at the
Inn door and joined her impatient friend. Flora kissed he