Peyrolles prepared to be frank. He put up his hand, and whispered behind it cautiously: "The married life of the Prince de Gonzague and the widow of Nevers has not been ideally happy."

Æsop grinned at him in derision. "You surprise me!" he commented, ironically.

Peyrolles went on: "The marriage is only a marriage in name. What arguments succeeded in persuading so young a widow to marry again so soon I do not, of course, know." He paused for a moment and frowned a little, for Æsop, though saying nothing, was lolling out his tongue at him mockingly. Then he went on, with a somewhat ruffled manner: "At all events, whatever the arguments were, they succeeded, and the Duchess de Nevers became the Princess de Gonzague. After the ceremony the Princess de Gonzague told her husband that she lived only in the hope of recovering her child, and that she would kill herself if she were not left in peace."

He paused for a moment. Æsop spurred him on: "Well, go on, go on."

Peyrolles cleared his throat. Being frank was neither habitual nor pleasant. "As the princess had absolute control of the wealth of her dead husband, the Duke de Nevers, and as she promised to allow my master the use of her fortune as long as he—"

Again he paused, and Æsop interpolated: "Left her in peace."

Peyrolles accepted the suggestion. "Exactly—my master, who is a perfect gentleman, accepted the situation. Since that day they seldom meet, seldom speak. The princess always wears mourning—"

Æsop shivered. "Cheerful spouse."

Peyrolles went on: "While the Prince de Gonzague lives a bright life, and sets the mode in wit, dress, vice—in every way the perfect gentleman, and now the favorite companion and friend of his melancholy majesty, whose natural sadness at the loss of the great cardinal he does his best to alleviate."

Æsop laughed mockingly as Peyrolles mouthed his approvals. "Lucky groom. But if he can spend the money, why does he want the girl?"

Peyrolles answered, promptly: "To please the princess, and prove himself the devoted husband."

Æsop was persistent: "What is the real reason?"

Peyrolles, with a grimace, again consented to be frank: "As Mademoiselle de Nevers is not proved to be dead, the law assumes her to be alive, and it is as the guardian of this impalpable young person that my dear master handles the revenues of Nevers. If she were certainly dead, my master would inherit."

Æsop still required information. "Then why the devil does he want to prove that she lives?"

There was again a touch of condescension in Peyrolles’s manner: "You are not so keen as you think, good Æsop. Mademoiselle de Nevers, recovered, restored to her mother’s arms, the recognized heiress of so much wealth, might seem to be a very lucky young woman. But even lucky young women are not immortal."

Æsop chuckled. "Oh, oh, oh! If the lost-and-found young lady were to die soon after her recovery the good Louis de Gonzague would inherit without further question. I fear my little gypsy is not promised a long life."

Peyrolles smiled sourly. "Let me see your little gypsy."

Æsop hesitated for a moment. It evidently went against his grain to oblige Peyrolles—or, for that matter, any man, in anything; but in this instance to oblige served his own turn. He rose, and, passing the door of the Inn, crossed the space of common land to where the caravan stood, a deserted monument of green and red.

The hunchback tapped at the door and whispered through the lock: "Are you there, Flora?"

A woman’s voice answered from within—a young voice, a sweet voice, a slightly impatient voice. "Yes," it said.

"Come out," Æsop commanded, curtly.

Then the gaudy door of the caravan yielded, and a pretty gypsy girt appeared in the opening. She was dark-haired, she was bright-eyed, she was warmly colored. She seemed to be about eighteen years of age, but her figure already had a rich Spanish fulness and her carriage was swaying and voluptuous. Most men would have been glad enough to stand for a while in adoration of so pleasing a picture, but Æsop was not as most men. His attitude to women when they concerned him personally was not of adoration. In this case the girl did not concern him personally, and he had no interest in her youth or her charms save in so far as they might serve the business he had in hand.

The girl looked at him with a little frown, and spoke with a little note of fretfulness in her voice: "So you have come at last. I have been so tired of waiting for you, mewed up in there."

Æsop answered her, roughly: "That’s my business. Here is a gentleman who wants to speak with you."

As he spoke he beckoned to Peyrolles, who rose from his seat and moved with what he considered to be dignity towards the pair, making great play of cane, great play of handkerchief, great play of jewelled-hilted sword flapping against neatly stockinged leg.

He saluted the gypsy in what he conceived to be the grand manner. "Can you tell fortunes, pretty one?"

The gypsy laughed, and showed good teeth as she did so. "Surely, on the palm or with the cards—all ways."

"Can you tell your own fortune?" Peyrolles questioned, with a faint tinge of malice in the words.

Flora laughed again, and answered, unhesitatingly: "To dance my way through the world, to enjoy myself as much as I can in the sunshine, to please pretty gentlemen, to have money to spend, to wear fine clothes and do nice things and enjoy myself, to laugh often and cry little. That is my fortune, I hope."

Peyrolles shook his head and looked very wise. "Perhaps I can tell you a better fortune."

Flora was impressed by the manner of the grand gentleman, for to her he seemed a grand gentleman. "Tell me, quick!" she entreated.

Peyrolles condescended to explain: "Seventeen years ago a girl of noble birth, one year old, was stolen from her mother and given to gypsies."

Flora, listening, counted on her fingers: "Seventeen, one, eighteen—why, just my age."

Peyrolles approved. "You are hearing the voice of Nature—excellent."

Æsop put in his word: "That mother has been looking for her child ever since."

Peyrolles summed up the situation with a malign smile: "We believe we have found her."

Flora began to catch the drift of the conversation, and was eager for more knowledge. "Go on—go on! I always dreamed of being a great lady."

Peyrolles raised a chastening finger. "Patience, child, patience. The prince, my master, honors the fair to-day in company with a most exalted personage. I will bring him here to see you dance. If he recognizes you, your fortune is made."

Flora questioned, cunningly: "How can he recognize a child of one?"

Peyrolles lifted to his eyes the elaborately laced kerchief he had been carrying in his right hand, and appeared to be a prey to violent emotions. "Your father was his dearest friend," he murmured, in a tearful voice. "He would see his features in you."

Flora clapped her hands. "I hope he will."

Æsop, looking cynically from the girl to the man and from the man to the girl, commented, dryly: "I think he will."

Peyrolles considered the interview had lasted long enough. He signed to the girl to retire with the air of a grandee dismissing some vassal. "Enough. Retire to your van till I come for you."

Flora pouted and pleaded: "Don’t be long. I’m tired of being in there."

Æsop snapped at her, sharply: "Do as you are told. You are not a princess yet."

The girl frowned, the girl’s eyes flashed, but her acquaintance with Æsop had given her the thoroughly justifiable impression that he was a man whom it was better to obey, and she retired into the caravan and shut the green-and-red door with a bang behind her.

Æsop turned with a questioning grin to Peyrolles. "Well?" he said.

Peyrolles looked approval. "I think she’ll do. I’ll go and find the prince at once."

"I will go a little way with you," Æsop said, more perhaps because he thought his company might exasperate the sham grand man than for any other reason. He knew Peyrolles would think it unbecoming his dignity to be seen in close companionship with the shabbily habited hunchback, hence his display of friendship. As he linked his black arm in the yellow-satin arm of Peyrolles, he added: "I have taken every care to make our tale seem plausible. The gypsies will swear that they stole her seventeen years ago."

Peyrolles nodded, looking askance at him, and wishing that destiny had not compelled him to make use of such an over-familiar agent, and the precious pair went over the bridge together and disappeared from the neighborhood of the little Inn, and the spirit of solitude seemed again to brood over the locality. But it was not suffered to brood for very long. As soon as the voices and the footsteps of Peyrolles and Æsop were no longer audible; the green-and-red door of the caravan was again cautiously opened, and cautiously the head of the pretty gypsy girl was thrust out into the air. When she saw that the pair had disappeared, she ran lightly down the steps of the caravan, and, crossing the common, paused under the windows of the Inn, where she began to sing in a sweet, rich voice a verse of a Spanish gypsy song: