Extricating herself impatiently from the embrace of her affianced husband, who succeeded, however, in pressing his lips against her brow, she disappeared within one of the tents, leaving Fin Cooper outside, a prey to contending feelings, among which jealousy and suspicion were in the ascendant. He loved the girl: of that he was quite sure, and in such a character, love is a fearful motive power for good or evil. It possesses also a keen instinct of reciprocity, not to be deceived, and few conditions are more pitiable than that of a strong wilful temperament, persuading itself, against its own convictions, that it is not exchanging gold for silver, that the ship which carries its whole freight is not sinking hourly beneath its feet. The gipsy would have been angered, even to baring of steel, by any comrade who had warned him of that which his heart began to tell him too plainly, though he dared not admit it to himself, who had hinted that Thyra loved another, and that other, one of the forbidden race--which, for all his Romany pride and Romany prejudices, he could not but acknowledge superior in every respect to his own. But he knew it, nevertheless, and only waited an opportunity to avenge himself on the rival, whom he had identified, almost to certainty, with John Garnet, _alias_ Galloping Jack, the highwayman. Even now, he thought it might not be too late to detach Waif from her unworthy and impossible attachment. Far into the night Fin Cooper tossed and turned from side to side, restless and sleepless, because of his wrongs, his memories, and his feverish longing to have his hand on John Garnet's throat. Waif, too, was uneasy and wakeful. She had not listened to the tale of Mary Lee, without accepting its moral for a warning to herself. Well she knew that in the bloody code of her people, to love a Gorgio was an offence punished by death. And she loved a Gorgio! Aye, loved him, as she thought with a thrill of pride, essentially womanly in the exquisite pleasure it evoked, the more deeply and dearly for the penalty. No pale-faced girl could care for him like that! When the time came, she would give him her life, as she had given him her love, without a murmur or a reproach. Perhaps, at that moment, he was looking at the very star on which her eyes were fixed, as it twinkled through the gaps in her brown weather-worn tent. Perhaps, who knows, in another life, to be spent up there amongst those stars, they might find themselves together? and so Waif's dark eyes closed in that other life, on which we enter every night, and the girl sank into a peaceful sleep, dreaming calmly of her love. CHAPTER XIII. ON THE SCENT.