"What is it, sister?" demanded Pine sharply, and making a sign that Silver should stop talking.
"Does the camp travel to-morrow, brother?"
"Perhaps, yes," retorted Pine abruptly.
"And perhaps no, brother, if you use your power."
Silver raised his faint eyebrows and looked questioningly at his employer, as if to ask what this cryptic sentence meant. Pine knew only too well, since Chaldea had impressed him thoroughly with the fact that she had overheard many of his secrets. Therefore he did not waste time in argument, but nodded quietly. "Sleep in peace, sister. The camp shall stay, if you wish it."
"I do wish it!" She glanced at Silver and changed her speech to Romany.
"The ring will be here," tapping her finger, "in one week if we stay."
"So be it, sister," replied Pine, also in Romany, and with a gleam of satisfaction in his dark eyes. "Go now and return when this Gentile goes. What of the golden Gorgious one?"
"He seeks Lundra this night."
"For the ring, sister?"
Chaldea looked hard at him. "For the ring" she said abruptly, then dropping the tent-flap which she had held all the time, she disappeared.
Silver looked at his master inquiringly, and noted that he seemed very satisfied. "What did she say in Romany?" he asked eagerly.
"True news and new news, and news you never heard of," mocked Pine.
"Don"t ask questions, Mark."
"But since I am your secretary--"
"You are secretary to Hubert Pine, not to Ishmael Hearne," broke in the other man. "And when Romany is spoken it concerns the last."
Silver"s pale-colored, red-rimmed eyes twinkled in an evil manner. "You are afraid that I may learn too much about you."
"You know all that is to be known," retorted Pine sharply. "But I won"t have you meddle with my Romany business. A Gentile such as you are cannot understand the chals."
"Try me."
"There is no need. You are my secretary--my trusted secretary--that is quite enough. I pay you well to keep my secrets."
"I don"t keep them because you pay me," said Silver quickly, and with a look of meekness belied by the sinister gleam in his pale bluish eyes.
"It is devotion that makes me honest. I owe everything to you."
"I think you do," observed Pine quietly. "When I found you in Whitechapel you were only a pauper toymaker."
"An inventor of toys, remember. You made your fortune out of my inventions."
"The three clever toys you invented laid the foundations of my wealth,"
corrected the millionaire calmly. "But I made my money in the South African share business. And if I hadn"t taken up your toys, you would have been now struggling in Whitechapel, since there was no one but me to exploit your brains in the toy-making way. I have rescued you from starvation; I have made you my secretary, and pay you a good salary, and I have introduced you to good society. Yes, you do indeed owe everything to me. Yet--" he paused.
"Yet what?"
"Miss Greeby observed that those who have most cause to be grateful are generally the least thankful to those who befriend them. I am not sure but what she is right."
Silver pushed up his lower lip contemptuously, and a derisive expression came over his clean-shaven face. "Does a clever man like you go to that emanc.i.p.ated woman for experience?"
"Emanc.i.p.ated women are usually very clever," said Pine dryly, "as they combine the logic of the male with the intuition of the female. And I have observed myself, in many cases, that kindness brings out ingrat.i.tude."
Silver looked sullen and uneasy. "I don"t know why you should talk to me in this strain," he said irritably. "I appreciate what you have done for me, and have no reason to treat you badly. If I did--"
"I would break you," flamed out his employer, angered by the mere thought. "So long as you serve me well, Silver, I am your friend, and I shall treat you as I have always done, with every consideration. But you play any tricks on me, and--" he paused expressively.
"Oh, I won"t betray you, if that"s what you mean."
"I am quite sure you won"t," said the millionaire with emphasis. "For if you do, you return to your original poverty. And remember, Mark, that there is nothing in my life which has any need of concealment."
Silver cast a look round the tent and at the rough clothes of the speaker. "No need of any concealment?" he asked significantly.
"Certainly not," rejoined Pine violently. "I don"t wish my gypsy origin to be known in the Gentile world. But if the truth did come to light, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I commit no crime in calling myself by a Gorgio name and in acc.u.mulating a fortune. You have no hold over me." The man"s look was so threatening that Silver winced.
"I don"t hint at any hold over you," he observed mildly. "I am bound to you both by grat.i.tude and self-interest."
"Aha. That last is better. It is just as well that we have come to this understanding. If you--" Pine"s speech was ended by a sharp fit of coughing, and Silver looked at his contortions with a thin-lipped smile.
"You"ll kill yourself if you live this damp colonial sort of tent-life,"
was his observation. "Here, take a drink of water."
Pine did so, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his rough coat.
"You"re a Gorgio," he said, weakly, for the fit had shaken him, "and can"t understand how a bred and born Romany longs for the smell of the smoke, the s.p.a.ce of the open country, and the sound of the kalo jib.
However, I did not ask you here to discuss these things, but to take my instructions."
"About Lady Agnes?" asked the secretary, his eyes scintillating.
"You have had those long ago, although, trusting my wife as I do, there was really no need for me to ask you to watch her."
"That is very true. Lady Agnes is exceedingly circ.u.mspect."
"Is she happy?"
Silver lifted his shoulders. "As happy as a woman can be who is married to one man while she loves another."
He expected an outburst of anger from his employer, but none came. On the contrary, Pine sighed, restlessly. "Poor soul. I did her a wrong in making her my wife. She would have been happier with Lambert in his poverty."
"Probably! Her tastes don"t lie like those of other women in the direction of squandering money. By the way, I suppose, since you are here, that you know Lambert is staying in the Abbot"s Wood Cottage?"
"Yes, I know that. And what of it?" demanded the millionaire sharply.
"Nothing; only I thought you would like to know. I fancied you had come here to see if--"
"I did not. I can trust you to see that my wife and Lambert do not meet without spying myself."
"If you love and trust your wife so entirely, I wonder you ask me to spy on her at all," said Silver with a faint sneer.