“Come along up, Ossy!  Good dog, Oss!” And, comforted by the warmth of that black body beside him in the chair, Summerhay fell asleep in front of the fire smouldering with blackened fragments of his past.

XI

Though Gyp had never seemed to look round she had been quite conscious of Summerhay still standing where they had parted, watching her into the house in Bury Street.  The strength of her own feeling surprised her, as a bather in the sea is surprised, finding her feet will not touch bottom, that she is carried away helpless—­only, these were the waters of ecstasy.

For the second night running, she hardly slept, hearing the clocks of St. James’s strike, and Big Ben boom, hour after hour.  At breakfast, she told her father of Fiorsen’s reappearance.  He received the news with a frown and a shrewd glance.

“Well, Gyp?”

“I told him.”

His feelings, at that moment, were perhaps as mixed as they had ever been—­curiosity, parental disapproval, to which he knew he was not entitled, admiration of her pluck in letting that fellow know, fears for the consequences of this confession, and, more than all, his profound disturbance at knowing her at last launched into the deep waters of love.  It was the least of these feelings that found expression.

“How did he take it?”

“Rushed away.  The only thing I feel sure of is that he won’t divorce me.”

“No, by George; I don’t suppose even he would have that impudence!” And Winton was silent, trying to penetrate the future.  “Well,” he said suddenly, “it’s on the knees of the gods then.  But be careful, Gyp.”

About noon, Betty returned from the sea, with a solemn, dark-eyed, cooing little Gyp, brown as a roasted coffee-berry.  When she had been given all that she could wisely eat after the journey, Gyp carried her off to her own room, undressed her for sheer delight of kissing her from head to foot, and admiring her plump brown legs, then cuddled her up in a shawl and lay down with her on the bed.  A few sleepy coos and strokings, and little Gyp had left for the land of Nod, while her mother lay gazing at her black lashes with a kind of passion.  She was not a child-lover by nature; but this child of her own, with her dark softness, plump delicacy, giving disposition, her cooing voice, and constant adjurations to “dear mum,” was adorable.  There was something about her insidiously seductive.  She had developed so quickly, with the graceful roundness of a little animal, the perfection of a flower.  The Italian blood of her great-great-grandmother was evidently prepotent in her as yet; and, though she was not yet two years old, her hair, which had lost its baby darkness, was already curving round her neck and waving on her forehead.  One of her tiny brown hands had escaped the shawl and grasped its edge with determined softness.  And while Gyp gazed at the pinkish nails and their absurdly wee half-moons, at the sleeping tranquillity stirred by breathing no more than a rose-leaf on a windless day, her lips grew fuller, trembled, reached toward the dark lashes, till she had to rein her neck back with a jerk to stop such self-indulgence.  Soothed, hypnotized, almost in a dream, she lay there beside her baby.