Ellenor was tall and angular, with a certain nobility and haughtiness of carriage inherited from her fisherman father. Her sallow skin, sombre grey eyes and heavy mouth, looked the personification of night beside the sunny beauty of Blaisette's blue eyes and yellow hair. The girl of the cottage was an excellent foil to the girl of Colomberie Farm. Did Blaisette realize, all unconsciously, the use of this to her as she went forward triumphantly in her victorious path as the belle of two parishes?
But to return to the group round the fire.
All at once, by common consent, as it appeared, the girls rose and crowded round the entrance. Ellenor lifted the latch, and, flinging the door wide open, she stood on the threshold and looked out into the inky blackness of the night. The wind howled and moaned as it entered the kitchen; and a flash of lightning tore open, for one second, the darkness of the sky. After the crash of thunder that followed, Blaisette cried in an awestruck voice,
"Surely now, Ellenor, you will not go!"
"Not go!" echoed the girl of the cottage, "not go! but this is the very weather to go in! Now, perhaps, you will all believe I fear nothing! and if there was need for it I would go bareheaded to Saint Peter Port in this deluge!" and she pointed to the sheets of rain which swept over the moorland.
Then a small, insignificant voice, coming from a woman who sat in the hearth corner, spoke irritably.
"You know, Ellenor, if your father was here, he would not let you play such tricks!"
Ellenor faced her mother with rebellion in every feature of her face.
"The girls have dared me to go to the Haunted House on this very night, and I'll go, mother, if I have to face the devil himself."