She used such
phrases of the gipsy jargon as she had picked up, and made jokes and
bantering speeches which set their host cackling with laughter. Osmonde
had seen her play a fantastic part before on their whimsical holidays,
but never one which suited her so well, and in which she seemed so full
of fire and daring wit. She was no Duchess, a man might have sworn, but
a tall, splendid, black-eyed laughing gipsy woman, who, to the man who
was her partner, would be a fortune every day, and a fortune not of
luck alone, but of gay spirit and bravery and light-hearted love.
That night the moon shone white and clear, and in the mid hours my lord
Duke waked from his sleep suddenly, and saw the brightness streaming
full through the oriel window, and in the fair flood of it his love's
white figure kneeling.
"Gerald," she cried, clinging to him when he went to her. "'Twas I
awaked you. I called, though I did not speak."
"I heard, as I should hear if I lay dead," he answered low.
Her hair was all unbound for the night--her black, wondrous hair which
he so loved--and from its billowy cloud her face looked at him wild and
white, her mouth quivering.
"Gerald," she said, "look out with me."
Together they looked forth from the wide window into the beauty of the
night, up into the great vault of Heaven, where the large silver moon
sailed in the blue, the stars shining faintly before her soft
brilliance.
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