“I hoped it would have pleased you that I had learnt to love her.”
Her bosom rose and fell with a long, quivering sigh. Cormac looked at her with a new light in his eyes. He came a step nearer to her.
“And do you wish to please me, Elgiva?” he asked.
“Why should I wish to please you?” she asked, pettishly. Then a quick blush swept over her face; knowing, as she did, that a wish to find favour in his eyes had been the desire of her life ever since they had parted. She had sobbed herself to sleep the night after he had struck her. And then, as the months passed by and womanhood began to dawn on her, she realised how uncouth and ugly she must have appeared in his eyes—and she had done all in her power to improve the comeliness that was really hers, but in her raw youth had hardly shown itself.
Cormac, in thought, had again gone back to their parting scene; he longed to ask for her forgiveness, but a strange shyness and restraint came upon him.
“And how did you get into the Men’s Airecht at the Fair?” he asked, after a time.
“I lost Gelert,” said Elgiva, with a new look of trouble in her eyes. “I missed him suddenly and ran at once to look for him. I could not find him, and when I came back to the place where I had left Ethne and our women, they were gone! I went about looking for them, and wandered in my confusion without noticing—into the Men’s Airecht.”
“Are you sure Ethne had left the place where you had last seen her?”
“I am certain, because it was marked with a wooden cross—the only wooden cross on the grounds. I could not be mistaken.”
“I know the place,” said Cormac, “and all the paths from there lead into the Men’s Airecht! You could scarcely fail to wander in——”