A cool, delicious hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like a stir of wings in a singing grove.

With a last effort to remain in the waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back again with one sighing word on his lips: "Fleda!" It was no illusion.

Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the nurse.

It was Jim Beadle who admitted her.
"He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her come," Jim had said to the nurse.
It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded him--the physical as well as business dangers.

She came now to serve the blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him.
The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, was, for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio..