When all was done, we turn’d away, dry-eyed, and walked together to the cottage. The bay horse was feeding on the moor below; and finding him still too lame to carry Delia, I shifted the saddles, and mending the broken rein, set her on Molly. The cottage door stood open, but we did not enter; only look’d in, and seeing Jan Tergagle curl’d beside the cold hearth, left him so.
Mile after mile we pass’d in silence, Delia riding, and I pacing beside her with the bay. At last, tortur’d past bearing, I spoke—
“Delia, have you nothing to say?”
For a while she seem’d to consider: then, with her eyes fix’d on the hills ahead, answered—
“Much, if I could speak: but all this has changed me somehow—’tis, perhaps, that I have grown a woman, having been a girl—and need to get used to it, and think.”
She spoke not angrily, as I look’d for; but with a painful slowness that was less hopeful.
“But,” said I, “over and over you have shown that I am nought to you. Surely—”
“Surely I am jealous? ’Tis possible—yes, Jack, I am but a woman, and so ’tis certain.”
“Why, to be jealous, you must love me!”
She look’d at me straight, and answered very deliberate—