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The instrument at first seemed to chatter with her agitation. I waited in breathless suspense. At last there came clearly from her crwth the wild air I had already heard on Snowdon. Then the sound of the instrument ceased save for the drone of the two bottom strings, and Sinfi's voice leapt out and I heard the words of what she called the Welsh dukkering gillie.
She said, 'While I was looking at that cross of rose and gold in the clouds it seemed to me that there came on the evening breeze the sound of a sob, and that it was Sinfi's, my sister Sinfi's; but of course by this time Snowdon stands between us and her.
'It goes wherever the Lovells go. Let us follow her. You can stay at Bettws or Capel Curig, and I can stay with Sinfi. I told her how strong was Sinfi's wish that we should not do so.
Anybody as says my daddy ain't a real 'Gyptian duke'll ha' to set to with Sinfi Lovell. 'Nonsense, said Cyril, smiling, and playing idly with a coral amulet dangling from Sinfi's neck; 'he's talking about the ancient Egyptians: Egyptian mummies, you silly Lady Sinfi. You're not a mummy, are you?
Sinfi's creed did not surprise me: the mixture of guile and simplicity in the Romany race is only understood by the few who know it thoroughly: the race whose profession it is to cheat by fortune-telling, to read the false 'dukkeripen' as being 'good enough for the Gorgios, believe profoundly in nature's symbols; but her bearing did surprise me.
The likeness to Sinfi was striking. How was it that it had not previously struck me more forcibly? The painter had evidently seized the moment when Fenella's eyes expressed that look of the seeress which Sinfi's eyes, on occasion, so powerfully expressed. I stood motionless before it while the rich, warm light of evening bathed it in a rosy radiance.
I saw Videy's eyes glisten greedily at sight of the gold, and, after we had parted, I was not at all surprised, though I knew her father, Panuel Lovell, a frequenter of Raxton fairs, to be a man of means, when she came back and said, with a coquettish smile, 'Give the bright balansers to Lady Sinfi's poor sister, my rei; give the balansers to the poor Gypsy, my rei.
'Will she join us? I asked. 'I know no more than you what will be Sinfi's next whim. At the last moment yesterday I was surprised to find that I was not to come with her here, as she was not to sleep in the camp last night because she had promised to see a friend at Capel Curig. And now, shall I tell you how she inveigled me into taking my part in this Snowdon play she was getting up?
This, as usual, sent my mind at once back to the picture of Fenella Stanley calling round her by the aid of her music the spirits of Snowdon. And then a strange hallucination came upon me, that made me clutch at Sinfi's arm. Close by her, reflected in a little glassy pool divided off from the current by a ring of stones, two blue eyes seemed gazing.
She then led the way up a slope green with grass and moss. We did not talk till we had passed the slate quarry. The evening was so fine and the scene was so lovely that Sinfi's very body seemed to drink it in and become intoxicated with beauty. After we had left the slate quarries behind, the panorama became more entrancing at every yard we walked.
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