Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/190

174 really had found me attractive, it was a shock to be spoken to in this way.

"Oh, you are cross!" I exclaimed, still poking about in the hole under the stairway.

"I'm not cross," he said, "but if I were, you'd deserve it, because you know you 've been foolish. And if you don't know, you ought to, so that you may be wiser next time. The idea of a sensible young woman chumming up in a lonely cave, with a dirty old gipsy certain to be a thief, if not worse, letting her tell fortunes, and then falling into a trap like this. I would n't have believed it of you!"

"I think you're perfectly horrid," said I. "I wish you had let the guide find me. He would have done it just as well, and been much more polite."

"Doubtless he would have been more polite, but he is n't as young, and might have had trouble in getting you out. There! that 's my last match, and you mustn't waste any more time looking for treasure which you won't find."

"Which I have found!" I announced. "I've got something more—away at the back of the hole. Not that you deserve to see it!"

However, I held up my hand in its torn, bloodstained glove, with two silver pieces displayed on the palm.

"A child's hidey-hole, I suppose," he said without showing as much interest as the occasion warranted. "Otherwise there would be something more valuable. A young servant of the Grimaldis, perhaps; these coins are all of the same period—of no great value as antiques, I 'm afraid."