“I do wish it!” She glanced at Silver and changed her speech to Romany.  “The ring will be here,” tapping her finger, “in one week if we stay.”

“So be it, sister,” replied Pine, also in Romany, and with a gleam of satisfaction in his dark eyes.  “Go now and return when this Gentile goes.  What of the golden Gorgious one?”

“He seeks Lundra this night.”

“For the ring, sister?”

Chaldea looked hard at him.  “For the ring” she said abruptly, then dropping the tent-flap which she had held all the time, she disappeared.

Silver looked at his master inquiringly, and noted that he seemed very satisfied.  “What did she say in Romany?” he asked eagerly.

“True news and new news, and news you never heard of,” mocked Pine.  “Don’t ask questions, Mark.”

“But since I am your secretary—­”

“You are secretary to Hubert Pine, not to Ishmael Hearne,” broke in the other man.  “And when Romany is spoken it concerns the last.”

Silver’s pale-colored, red-rimmed eyes twinkled in an evil manner.  “You are afraid that I may learn too much about you.”

“You know all that is to be known,” retorted Pine sharply.  “But I won’t have you meddle with my Romany business.  A Gentile such as you are cannot understand the chals.”

“Try me.”

“There is no need.  You are my secretary—­my trusted secretary—­that is quite enough.  I pay you well to keep my secrets.”

“I don’t keep them because you pay me,” said Silver quickly, and with a look of meekness belied by the sinister gleam in his pale bluish eyes.  “It is devotion that makes me honest.  I owe everything to you.”

“I think you do,” observed Pine quietly.  “When I found you in Whitechapel you were only a pauper toymaker.”

“An inventor of toys, remember.  You made your fortune out of my inventions.”

“The three clever toys you invented laid the foundations of my wealth,” corrected the millionaire calmly.  “But I made my money in the South African share business.  And if I hadn’t taken up your toys, you would have been now struggling in Whitechapel, since there was no one but me to exploit your brains in the toy-making way.  I have rescued you from starvation; I have made you my secretary, and pay you a good salary, and I have introduced you to good society.  Yes, you do indeed owe everything to me.  Yet—­” he paused.

“Yet what?”

“Miss Greeby observed that those who have most cause to be grateful are generally the least thankful to those who befriend them.  I am not sure but what she is right.”

Silver pushed up his lower lip contemptuously, and a derisive expression came over his clean-shaven face.  “Does a clever man like you go to that emancipated woman for experience?”

“Emancipated women are usually very clever,” said Pine dryly, “as they combine the logic of the male with the intuition of the female.  And I have observed myself, in many cases, that kindness brings out ingratitude.”