"You've wisdom on your tongue,
whether it's lucky or no. You say you're not a gipsy?"
By this time it had dawned on Loveday what, in her absorption, she had
not at first noticed, that she was speaking to one of the gentry, and
to no less a one than Mr. Constantine, of Constantine. She stood up and
dropped her curtsey out of habit, but sullenly. Oddly enough, it was the
sullenness and not the curtsey that took Mr. Constantine's fancy.
"No, sir," said Loveday. "I'm not a gipsy. I'm Loveday Strick."
"Loveday ..." said the gentleman. "Loveday ... That's a beautiful name.
No--it's more than a name, it's a phrase. A very beautiful phrase."
Loveday raised her eyes at this strange talk. Mr. Constantine took his
hand out of his pocket and held out a silver sixpence.
"Gipsy or no, take that for your gipsy eyes, my dear," he said. Loveday
stood hesitant. Even she, who had just begged of Miss Letitia, felt
shame at taking a coin in charity. Yet she did so, for before her eyes
she saw, not a silver sixpence, but the beginning of a length of white
satin riband unrolling towards her through futurity. Perhaps, unknown
to herself, her foreign blood prompted her to that sad Jesuitry which
teaches all means are justifiable to the desired end. Perhaps she saw
nothing beyond the beginning of her riband, but she held out her hand.
Mr. Constantine dropped the sixpence into it, touched his cob with his
heel and rode on. Loveday stayed in the hedge, the sixpence in her palm
and hope once more in her soul.
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