Pimpernel and Rosemary, Baroness Orczy [i have read the book a hundred times .txt] 📗

to the gipsy, and said kindly: “Walk beside me, and don’t try to run away; the gracious lord will not hurt you if you walk quietly beside me.”

And so the three of them walked across the lawn toward the château, Rosemary in front, and beside her the gipsy, whose long thin hands almost swept the grass as he walked with bent knees and arched back, throwing from time to time anxious glances behind him. But Peter was lagging behind.

When they were close to the château, they saw Elza coming down the veranda steps. Rosemary ordered the gipsy to wait, and ran to meet Elza; in a few words she told her what had occurred. Elza then came across the gravel path, and said to the gipsy: “I am the Countess Imrey. You may give me the letter!”

The man’s back became more curved than ever; he nearly touched the ground with his forehead. In the darkness Rosemary seemed to see his long, thin body curling itself up almost into a ball.

“I was told,” he murmured meekly, “to give the letter into the hands of the gracious countess only when she was alone.”

Instinctively Rosemary turned to look for Peter. To her surprise she saw him just above her, going up the veranda steps. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and he was whistling a tune.

The gipsy whom he had so maltreated a little while ago no longer seemed to interest him. Rosemary called to him rather impatiently:

“Peter!”

He paused and looked down at her. “Hallo!” he said coolly.

“Do you think it is all right for Elza to talk with this man alone?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?” he said, with a laugh.

Then he called out to Elza:

“I say, Aunt Elza, if the wretch should try to kiss you, sing out, won’t you?”

Elza laughed good-humouredly.

“Of course I am not afraid,” she said. “And I do want to know about this mysterious letter.”

Rosemary would have liked to argue the point. She could not understand how it was that Peter took the matter so lightly all of a sudden. However, as Elza was playfully pushing her out of the way, whilst Peter calmly continued to stroll up the stairs, she only said with a final note of earnestness: “I shall be quite close, Elza. You have only to call, you know.”

“I know, I know,” Elza rejoined, still laughing. “You don’t suppose that I am frightened of a gipsy, do you?”

She waited a moment or two until Rosemary was out of sight, then she turned back to the man, and said:

“I am alone now. You may give me the letter.”

XVIII

Rosemary went slowly up the veranda steps. She did not feel that it would be loyal to pry into Elza’s secrets, but at the same time she wanted to remain well within call. From where she was she could see Peter’s broad shoulders blocking the French window which gave on the drawing-room. From somewhere in the house, both above and below stairs, came the sound of laughter and song.

A moment or two later she heard Elza’s footsteps behind her on the gravel walk, and presently Elza was there, going up the veranda steps beside Rosemary. She did not say a word, and Rosemary asked no questions. She could see that Elza was preoccupied. She also noticed that the letter⁠—or whatever it was⁠—was not in Elza’s hands.

Peter stood aside to allow the two ladies to step into the drawing-room. He asked no questions either, and Elza did not volunteer any information. It seemed as if the incident of the mysterious gipsy had never been. Later on Peter sat down at the piano and played a csàrdàs, for Philip and Anna to dance. They were beautiful dancers, both of them, and it was a pleasure to watch them swaying and bending to the syncopated cadences of the beautiful Hungarian music. Peter, too, had evidently that music in the blood. Rosemary had no idea he could play it so well. He seemed just as excited as the dancers, and accelerated the movements of the csàrdàs until little Anna called for mercy, and even Philip seemed ready to give in. For the time being Rosemary forgot her troubles in the joy of seeing those two enjoying themselves, and the delight of listening to Peter. What a pity, she thought, as she had often done, that he should waste all the poetry, the talent that was in him, and only devote his mind to cricket. She drew close up to the piano, to watch his slender fingers flying over the keys, and as she did so, her glance at one moment wandered to the small whatnot in the corner by the piano. There, in the midst of a miscellaneous collection of cigarette boxes, ashtrays, matchboxes, lay a small automatic.

Peter caught her eye, which at the moment expressed a mute inquiry. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He had a cigarette in a long holder in the corner of his mouth, but he contrived to murmur:

“Yes, the blighter; wasn’t I right to thrash him?”

Rosemary looked across at Elza. She sat quite placidly, as she always did, close to her husband’s chair, watching her Philip⁠—her soul in her eyes. She was smiling, and now and then she turned to say a word or two to Maurus; but to Rosemary she still looked preoccupied, and once she caught Elza’s large kind eyes fixed upon her with a curious, scrutinizing gaze.

An hour later when Rosemary was in her room and beginning to undress, there was a knock at her door, and Elza came in, with that kindly smile of hers still on her face, but with a troubled look in her eyes.

“May I come in for a moment, darling?” she asked.

Rosemary made her comfortable on the sofa, and sat down beside her. Elza took hold of both her hands and fondled them, stroking them up and down, and she began talking about Philip and Anna, and the