"Do you care for her, Griff?" she asked suddenly.
Again he nodded. Protestations seemed out of place.
Sybil turned her face from him, and looked for inspiration to the white-armed maidens of the mist. The gambler's madness was on her now. If Griff were to be won, she must stake, not pride only, but honour and good fame; it was too late to draw back to half measures. Four walls of fog shut in their little square of beaded heather, giving the woman courage to believe that no hint from the outside world could reach them there.
"Griff," she cried, stamping one little foot on the ground, "I won't believe that you love her—I won't—I won't! You were mine two years ago, you are mine now. How dare you mock me with this talk of another woman!" The anger died; her voice grew low and soft; her baby lips pleaded with him. "Such a warm little nest I have always kept for you, dear, in my heart—warmer than ever you dreamed of in the old days. And when my husband died, I thought you would come back to me, I thought you would ask me to tell you what I was free to tell without staining my honour. But you never came, and I feared I should lose every bit of prettiness I had, Griff, in crying my eyes out for you." She was watching his face, and the pity in it nerved her to the last effort. "I have gone too far, too far. Oh, my dearest! what is honour if it goes with a barren life?"
Griff moved impatiently up and down, gnawing at the stem of his pipe. What an utter baby she was—spoiled and selfish, with never a thought for any happiness but her own. His anger was rising quickly. What would Kate say to all this, he wondered?
Before he could speak, another figure staggered out of the mist—a short, thick-set man with a scrubby beard and a flushed face. He tripped over a clump of cranberries, and fell prone at Mrs. Ogilvie's feet. She clung to Griff's arm in terror.
"It's thee, is't?" said Joe Strangeways, scrambling to his feet again and looking from one to the other, his hands in his pockets, his legs moving backwards and forwards to maintain their perilous equilibrium. "It's thee, Griff Lummax—robbing another chap of his wench, I'll go bail. Tha'rt a bonny un, thou art, an' proper." He turned to Sybil. "Clout his lugs for him, woman, an' send him trapesing home again. He'll bring thee to shame, will Griff. It's all th' trade he's getten."
Mrs. Ogilvie began to laugh, in a false key. Griff had seen her in hysterics once, and he knew the symptoms; without more ado he gave her a good, hearty smack on the cheek, and, "Don't be a little fool, Sybil!" he muttered harshly. Then he took Joe by the arm, and led him into a sheep-track that crossed the Gorsthwaite path at right angles. "That is your road, Strangeways," he said quietly. "The mist is clearing already. You'll get home by night with luck."
Both his victims stood irresolute from surprise. Sybil had forgotten hysterics altogether in the smart of the blow and her anger at such unwarrantable treatment. Joe found it hard to meet his enemy's matter-of-fact item of information. Finally, the quarryman, swearing and grumbling, took himself off along the track indicated, and Griff returned to Mrs. Ogilvie.
"I'm very sorry," he said, laughing at the absurdity of this last scene in the drama; "I'm very sorry if I hurt you, Sybil, but I was not going to have you on my hands in the middle of the moor. See, we shall have the sun out again in a minute or two. I believe we went to sleep, you and I, and dreamed we were in a fog, and you, or I, or both of us, said a quantity of foolish things, which we can't remember now. Shall I put you on your way to the Folly?"