Still Griff did not move. He was watching the elfin-revel, and thinking of the old moor legend that a White Lady rides on the swirling mist, tempting men to their doom in the bogs that take, but render never again.
"It would need a marvellous White Lady to tempt me astray nowadays," murmured Griff, and laughed as he thought of Kate.
A voice came out of the mist.
"Bertie, is that you? How can you lie on your back there, while I am dying of fright in the middle of this horrid moor?"
Griff knew the voice at once; it had thrilled him too often in times past to admit of doubt. He rose slowly and lifted his cap to a figure that loomed out of the fog-wall a few yards away.
"No, I'm not Dereham. Perhaps you have forgotten me, Mrs. Ogilvie?" he said.
She came close up to him—a little hothouse woman, with a delicate, rounded waist, and lips that were always either pouting or pleading. The blush-rose tints deepened against the waxy white of her cheeks, as she held out her hand. After a pause—
"Who would have thought of meeting you here, Griff?" broke out the woman, impetuously. "And yet I—half expected it. Bertie told me you had buried yourself in this wretched place, and I—yes, I did—I hoped I should run across you here. There! I should never, never have confessed the half of that, if I had not been so awfully frightened."
She was devouring him with her eyes, in a strange, famine-stricken way that startled this quondam slave of hers. Griff, remembering certain remarks of Dereham's, realized vaguely that she would be in his arms before the end of the scene, unless he took strong measures.
"Frightened by what? A touch of mist in the middle of a summer's morning? You are a baby, Sybil."