The three of them went down the moor, counting the furlongs miles. And again the brothers met on equal terms; for each was bruised and hungry, and body-sickness, if it strike deep enough, is apt to bring wayfarers to one common level.

Nance and Will Underwood had reached the lower lands by now, and she turned to him at the gate of Demaine House with some reluctance.

“You will let my father thank you for your escort?” she asked, stroking her mare’s neck.

“I’ll come in,” he answered, with the rollicking assurance that endeared him to the hard riders of the county—“if only for an hour more with you.” He leaned across and touched her bridle-hand. “Nance, you’ve treated me all amiss these last days. You never give me a word apart, and there’s so much——”

“I’m tired and cold,” she broke in, wayward and sleety as this moorland that had cradled her. “You may spare me—what shall I say?—the flattery that Mr. Underwood gives every woman, when other women are not there to hear.”

She did not know what ailed her. Until an hour ago she had been yielding, little by little, to the suit which Will Underwood had pressed on her—in season and out, as his way was. There had been sudden withdrawals, gusts of coquetry, on her part; for the woman’s flight at all times is like a snipe’s—zig-zag, and only to be reckoned with according to the rule of contraries.

But now, as she went into the house, not asking but simply permitting him to follow her, there was a real avoidance of him. She could not rid herself of the picture of Rupert, standing desolate up yonder on the empty moors—Rupert, who was heir to traditions of hard riding and hard fighting; Rupert, with the eyes of a dreamer and the behaviour of a hermit. She wondered what he and Maurice were doing on[11] the moor. His last words had not suggested need of her—had hinted plainly that he had a man’s work to do.

[11]

Her father was in the hall as they came in. A glance at his face told her that Roger Demaine was in no mood for trifles, and she stood apart, willingly enough, while he gravely offered wine to Underwood, and filled his glass for him, and scarcely paused to let him set lips to it before he ran into the middle of his tale.

“There’s muddled news from Scotland. I can’t make head or tail of it,” he said, glancing sharply round to see that no servants were in earshot. “We expected him to come 

 Prev. P 9/322 next