“Has it strayed from you?”
“I have never had it. He loves Brichtiva, on the other side of the wood, and he will not look on me. I hate her. I want to beguile his heart away from her.”
“What has she done to you?”
“Done!” cried the girl, with a flash of her eyes. “Done! She is fair and sweet, and she has won Wigan’s love. That is what she has done to me.”
“And you love Wigan?”
“I care nothing for Wigan. I hate Brichtiva. I want to be revenged on her.”
“I can do nothing for you,” answered Haldane severely. “Revenge is the business of the black witch, not the Wise Woman who deals in honest simples and harmless charms. Go home and say thy prayers, Maiden, and squeeze the black drop out of thine heart, that thou fall not into the power of the Evil One. Depart!”
This interview quite satisfied Ermine that Haldane was no genuine witch of the black order. However dubious her principles might be in some respects, she had evidently distinct notions of right and wrong, and would not do what she held wicked for gain.
Other applicants came at intervals through the day. There were many with burns, scalds, sprains, or bruises, nearly all of which Haldane treated with herbal poultices, or lotions; some with inward pain, to whom she gave bottles of herbal drinks. Some wanted charms for all manner of purposes—to make a horse go, induce plants to grow, take off a spell, or keep a lover true. A few asked to have their fortunes told, and wonderful adventures were devised for them. After all the rest, when it began to grow dusk, came a man muffled up about the face, and evidently desirous to remain unknown.
The White Witch rested her hands on the staff which she kept by her, partly for state and partly for support, and peered intently at the half-visible face of the new-comer.