To return to the cottage.  Our mirth and fun grew fast and furious; the family were delighted with my anecdotes of the Rommany in other lands—­German, Bohemian, and Spanish,—­not to mention the gili.  And we were just in the gayest centre of it all, “whin,—­och, what a pity!—­this fine tay-party was suddenly broken up,” as Patrick O’Flanegan remarked when he was dancing with the chairs to the devil’s fiddling, and his wife entered.  For in rushed a Gipsy boy announcing that Gorgios (or, as I may say, “wite trash”) were near at hand, and evidently bent on entering.  That this irruption of the enemy gave a taci-turn to our riotry and revelling will be believed.  I tossed the brandy in the cup into the fire; it flashed up, and with it a quick memory of the spilt and blazing witch-brew in “Faust.”  I put the tourist-flask in my pocket, and in a trice had changed my seat and assumed the air of a chance intruder.  In they came, two ladies—­one decidedly pretty—­and three gentlemen, all of the higher class, as they indicated by their manner and language.  They were almost immediately followed by a Gipsy, the son of my hostess, who had sent for him that he might see me.

He was a man of thirty, firmly set, and had a stern hard countenance, in which shone two glittering black eyes, which were serpent-like even among the Rommany.  Nor have I ever seen among his people a face so expressive of self-control allied to wary suspicion.  He was neatly dressed, but in a subdued Gipsy style, the principal indication being that of a pair of “cords,” which, however, any gentleman might have worn—­in the field.  His English was excellent—­in fact, that of an educated man; his sum total that of a very decided “character,” and one who, if you wronged him, might be a dangerous one.

We entered into conversation, and the Rommany rollicking seemed all at once a vapoury thing of the dim past; it was the scene in a witch-revel suddenly shifted to a drawing-room in May Fair.  We were all, and all at once, so polite and gentle, and so readily acquainted and cosmo-polite—­quite beyond the average English standard; and not the least charming part of the whole performance was the skill with which the minor parts were filled up by the Gipsies, who with exquisite tact followed our lead, seeming to be at once hosts and guests.  I have been at many a play, but never saw anything better acted.

But under it all burnt a lurid though hidden flame; and there was a delightful diablerie of concealment kept up among the Rommany, which was the more exquisite because I shared in it.  Reader, do you remember the scene in George Borrow’s “Gipsies in Spain,” in which the woman blesses the child in Spanish, and mutters curses on it meanwhile in Zincali?  So it was that my dear old hostess blessed the sweet young lady, and “prodigalled” compliments on her; but there was one instant when her eye met mine, and a soft, quick-whispered, wicked Rommany phrase, unheard by the ladies, came to my ear, and in the glance and word there was a concentrated anathema.