"No; but in that moment I made a long journey, away and back again. Death is a remote country,—to be so near! Well, Sâprani does not seem to believe in our friendship, Cousin Frank."
"I will not ask you to forgive her. I need all your forgiveness for myself, for having exposed you to such a danger."
"You saved my life; and life is, perhaps, the most formidable of dangers," she replied, smiling again. "But I thank you none the less. And Sâprani is a superb creature: I bear her no grudge. She is jealous of her master."
"She has shown that I am not her master. I shall not need the hint a second time."
"Perhaps she perceives some harm to you in our acquaintance which you and I are still unconscious of. They are mysterious beings—serpents!"
"Nothing but good can come from you to me, Sinfire: though you are more mysterious than Sâprani."
"I?—mysterious? Oh, Cousin Frank, you wish to make game of me!"
"You are a mystery, from your name onward," he repeated, taking her hands in his and looking in her eyes. "You are no cousin of mine: your ancestors had been civilized a thousand years when ours were eating shell-fish and shooting flint arrows on the lagoons of Europe. I speak as a scientific man,—as an ethnologist and a physiognomist. Sinfire, you are a gypsy!"
As he said the last words, the man of science felt the pulse leap in her delicate wrists. These organic symptoms cannot easily be controlled,—though, on the other hand, nothing is easier than to misinterpret them. She instantly laughed, and said, "You are a wizard! I have always thought there must be Rommany blood in me. And I can tell fortunes."
There was no tremor in her voice, nor did the color deepen in her cheeks. But the wizard resolved to try his luck once more.
"My brother knows more about gypsies than I do," he said. "He once lived among them for several months. If you are interested in them, you might learn much from him."
"He has lived among them!" she exclaimed. "He never told me so. And I thought," she added, with what seemed the lightest intonation of irony, "that he had told me all he knew!"
Poor John! This did not promise well for the chances of Sinfire becoming Mrs. Mainwaring. But this assurance that wealth and ambition were not what Sinfire sought only tended to substantiate the theory that was doubtfully taking form in the wizard's mind. He now pro-
