Silver looked sullen and uneasy.  “I don’t know why you should talk to me in this strain,” he said irritably.  “I appreciate what you have done for me, and have no reason to treat you badly.  If I did—­”

“I would break you,” flamed out his employer, angered by the mere thought.  “So long as you serve me well, Silver, I am your friend, and I shall treat you as I have always done, with every consideration.  But you play any tricks on me, and—­” he paused expressively.

“Oh, I won’t betray you, if that’s what you mean.”

“I am quite sure you won’t,” said the millionaire with emphasis.  “For if you do, you return to your original poverty.  And remember, Mark, that there is nothing in my life which has any need of concealment.”

Silver cast a look round the tent and at the rough clothes of the speaker.  “No need of any concealment?” he asked significantly.

“Certainly not,” rejoined Pine violently.  “I don’t wish my gypsy origin to be known in the Gentile world.  But if the truth did come to light, there is nothing to be ashamed of.  I commit no crime in calling myself by a Gorgio name and in accumulating a fortune.  You have no hold over me.”  The man’s look was so threatening that Silver winced.

“I don’t hint at any hold over you,” he observed mildly.  “I am bound to you both by gratitude and self-interest.”

“Aha.  That last is better.  It is just as well that we have come to this understanding.  If you—­” Pine’s speech was ended by a sharp fit of coughing, and Silver looked at his contortions with a thin-lipped smile.

“You’ll kill yourself if you live this damp colonial sort of tent-life,” was his observation.  “Here, take a drink of water.”

Pine did so, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his rough coat.  “You’re a Gorgio,” he said, weakly, for the fit had shaken him, “and can’t understand how a bred and born Romany longs for the smell of the smoke, the space of the open country, and the sound of the kalo jib.  However, I did not ask you here to discuss these things, but to take my instructions.”

“About Lady Agnes?” asked the secretary, his eyes scintillating.

“You have had those long ago, although, trusting my wife as I do, there was really no need for me to ask you to watch her.”

“That is very true.  Lady Agnes is exceedingly circumspect.”

“Is she happy?”

Silver lifted his shoulders.  “As happy as a woman can be who is married to one man while she loves another.”

He expected an outburst of anger from his employer, but none came.  On the contrary, Pine sighed, restlessly.  “Poor soul.  I did her a wrong in making her my wife.  She would have been happier with Lambert in his poverty.”

“Probably!  Her tastes don’t lie like those of other women in the direction of squandering money.  By the way, I suppose, since you are here, that you know Lambert is staying in the Abbot’s Wood Cottage?”