"Say even that," he answered, without either joy or sorrow in his tone.
"Oh my fair son," she cried out in an unhappy and lamenting voice, "I knew ye had been among the witch-wives; and shall your face, a young comely face of a golden lording...."
"What ails my face?" he asked.
"Sirs," she cried out, "his face is like the very still water of old grey rock-pools, with no dancing before the wind and sun."
"Even let it be so," he answered.
"Ay, ye are in a worse case than your dad," she cried. "All the Ruthvens had these traffics."
He looked at her hardly.
"My brother Decies was a witch's son?" he said. "That was my father's sin that sent him roaming?"
"Of a witch that dressed as a nun and stole into a convent," she said, and rocked herself woefully where she sat beside her washing board at the edge of the pool. "They found witch marks upon her. They should have drowned the child, but he took it by force and with great oaths and sent it into foreign shires. And that made his sin the heavier."
"Ah, well!" the Young Lovell said.