“Was going to ask ye for a last kiss, but I’m past that, Reuben. Lad, I wonder will ye ever know the kisses we might have had! I think ye’ll waken sometimes in the night, and hunger for what’s past your getting any longer. Fratch as we may, we were made each for the other, if your een were open wide enough to see it.”
“Peggy, lass,” he began, moving nearer to her.
“Nay, Reuben! Over and done with, like a last year’s nest. Yond’s your way; I’m going wide into the moor, to cool a touch of some daft fever that’s come over me.”
Irresolute, and glancing backward often, Reuben went up toward Ghyll Farm. Life, that had seemed so plain last night upon the Garth highroad, was tangled now. The fierce, low passion of the girl—her certainty of heart-break, with little complaining—a shrewd guess that she was right in saying he would wake at night and think of her—these were out of keeping with the primrose lanes of yesterday.
“’Tis hard to go straight,” said Gaunt at last, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he reached the paddock of Ghyll Farm.
No horse was tethered to the gate; but over the top bar leaned Widow Mathewson, her brown arms naked to the sunlight and a look of grim derision on her face.
“Seeking a horse, Mr. Gaunt?” she asked, with studied courtesy.
“Yes, I tethered him to the gate here.”
“Oh, ’twill be the one I loosened an hour or so agone. Found him here, when I came from driving sheep across the moorland; and I hadn’t a use for him myself.”
“Thank you,” said Reuben, falling in with the widow’s own quiet tone. “Sensible thing, Mrs. Mathewson, to loose a cob whenever ye find him tied to a gate-post by the bridle.”