He set his horse across her path and awaited her.
“What do you here, woman?” he demanded sternly, as she stopped over against him.
She drew her thin shawl about her shoulders.
“He—the man,” she muttered, with a sort of fierceness breaking through instinctive deprecation, “does me many a little kindness. I came to see him.”
“And tempt him to dishonest traffic in his master’s goods? That is a double-dealing charity.”
She clinched her hands and her teeth. He saw “You lie” on her lips, though the words were not uttered. But he hardly resented the implication. He knew in his heart he slandered his servant—that he could never bring himself to do the man justice.
For a moment he scanned the seamed face set daringly opposite him. There were traces of a wild, lost beauty furrows of sorrow and want and despair in it to an unprejudiced mind. But that in this instance his was not.
“Harkee, mistress!” he said. “I was watching you two once before when you thought yourselves unobserved. Something then passed from him to you—here, in this drive. Do you deny it?”
“No,” she said.
“Then take warning, and carry your dealing to an open market. I want no secret pilferers about.”