Their eyes met over the flames, then Robert remembered the need for keeping up appearances, and said he wanted his fortune told. He could scarcely wait while Meridiana muttered about a fair young lady and a heap of money coming to him in a year or two. Bessie slipped round the brazier and stood beside him, their hands impudently locked, each finger of the boy's clinging round a finger of the girl's. Meridiana's low sing-song continued: "It's a gorgeous time I see before you, dear; riches and a carriage and servants in livery, and a beautiful wife decked over with jewels and gold as bright as her hair--success and a fair name, honour and a ripe old age--and remember the poor gipsy woman, won't you, darling?" But he had already forgotten her. He stood with his arm round Bessie, stooping under the canvas roof, half choking in the brazier reek, while his lips came closer and closer to her face.... "Hir me duval!" said Meridiana to herself, "but they've forgotten the poor person's child." She saw them go out of the tent, still linked and in their dream, then watched their dark shapes stoop against the sky. They clung together panting and trembling, for she was really his at last, and he was hers. Before them lay the darkness, but they would go into it hand in hand. She was his, and he was hers. At last they dropped their arms and stood apart. The dusk was full of rustlings, flittings, scuttlings, kisses.... "God bless you, gorgeous lady and gentleman," cried Meridiana shrilly from the tent--"the dukkerin dukk tells me that you shall always wear satin and velvet, and have honour wherever you go." Then suddenly a heavy hand fell on Robert's shoulder, and a voice said: "Robert Backfield, I arrest you on the charge of stealing a pocket-book containing bonds and money from Squire Ralph Bardon of Flightshot." § 15. With many tears, and the help of the kindly farmer's daughter at Eggs Hole, who acted as penwoman, Bessie wrote a letter to Robert in the Battery gaol: "You must not think, my dearest lad, that anything what you have done can separate you and me. We belong to each other as it seems, and what you have done I forgive as you would if I had done it. I shall always be yours, Robby, no matter how long you are in prison, I shall be waiting, and thinking of you always. And I forgive you for not telling me you had taken the money, but that a friend had lent it to you, because you thought I would not have gone away with you, but I would have, surely. Be brave and do not fret. I wish it was all over, but we must not fret. "From your loving "BESSIE." The proceedings before the Rye magistrates had been brief, and ended in Robert's committal for trial at Quarter Sessions. He had made no attempt to deny his guilt--it would have been useless. He was almost dumb in the dock, for his soul was struck with wonder at the cruel circumstances which had betrayed him.