’I ‘ve not seen the man I’d marry,’ she answered, grinning scorn.

The prizefighter had adopted drinking for his pursuit; one of her aunts was dead, and she was in quest of money to bury the dead woman with the conventional ceremonies and shows of respect dear to the hearts of gipsies, whose sense of propriety and adherence to customs are a sentiment indulged by them to a degree unknown to the stabled classes.  In fact, they have no other which does not come under the definite title of pride;—­pride in their physical prowess, their dexterity, ingenuity, and tricksiness, and their purity of blood.  Kiomi confessed she had hoped to meet me; confessed next that she had been waiting to jump out on me:  and next that she had sat in a tree watching the Grange yesterday for six hours; and all for money to do honour to her dead relative, poor little soul!  Heriot and I joined the decent procession to the grave.  Her people had some quarrel with the Durstan villagers, and she feared the scandal of being pelted on the way to the church.  I knew that nothing of the sort would happen if I was present.  Kiomi walked humbly with her head bent, leaving me the thick rippling coarse black locks of her hair for a mark of observation.  We were entertained at her camp in the afternoon.  I saw no sign of intelligence between her and Heriot.  On my asking her, the day before, if she remembered him, she said, ’I do, I’m dangerous for that young man.’  Heriot’s comment on her was impressed on me by his choosing to call her ‘a fine doe leopard,’ and maintaining that it was a defensible phrase.

She was swept from my amorous mind by Mabel Sweetwinter, the miller’s daughter of Dipwell.  This was a Saxon beauty in full bud, yellow as mid-May, with the eyes of opening June.  Beauty, you will say, is easily painted in that style.  But the sort of beauty suits the style, and the well-worn comparisons express the well-known type.  Beside Kiomi she was like a rich meadow on the border of the heaths.

We saw them together on my twenty-first birthday.  To my shame I awoke in the early morning at Riversley, forgetful of my father’s old appointment for the great Dipwell feast.  Not long after sunrise, when blackbirds peck the lawns, and swallows are out from under eaves to the flood’s face, I was hailed by Janet Ilchester beneath my open windows.  I knew she had a bet with the squire that she would be the first to hail me legal man, and was prepared for it.  She sat on horseback alone in the hazy dewy Midsummer morning, giving clear note: 

‘Whoop!  Harry Richmond! halloo!’ To which I tossed her a fox’s brush, having a jewelled bracelet pendant.  She missed it and let it lie, and laughed.

’No, no; it’s foxie himself!—­anybody may have the brush.  You’re dressed, are you, Harry?  You were sure I should come?  A thousand happy years to you, and me to see them, if you don’t mind.  I ’m first to wish it, I’m certain.  I was awake at three, out at halfpast, over Durstan heath, across Eckerthy’s fields—­we’ll pay the old man for damage—­down by the plantation, Bran and Sailor at my heels, and here I am.  Crow, cocks! bark, dogs! up, larks!  I said I’d be first.  And now I ’m round to stables to stir up Uberly.  Don’t be tardy, Mr. Harry, and we’ll be Commodore Arson and his crew before the world’s awake.’