“See ye now, Cilla,” he began, puffing fiercely at his pipe, “I want to know a few odd whys and wherefores. Ye know my view of Reuben Gaunt? Is’t sober truth that ye were foolish with him yesternight?”
“Yes, father.” She was sitting opposite him across the hearth, and her troubled eyes met his without fear or secrecy. “I thought we loved each other, and I promised myself to him.”
“God, ye rate yourself cheaper than I do, Cilla! There, lile lass, there! I didn’t mean to be harsh! Well, then, what chanced to alter you?”
“I walked up the fields this morning,” she said, with hesitation now.
“Ay, I know! What did ye find there? Not one to shift round like a windle-straw, ye.”
“What I found is not for you to ask, or me to tell, father,” she answered, meeting his glance again. “I can tell you this much—that the gloaming and the moon between them were overstrong for me last night, and the morning’s sunlight cured me of my fairy-madness.”
“Cured altogether, lile Cilla?” asked the farmer, after a silence and a shrewd, long look at her.
“Cured altogether—yes,” she answered gravely.
“That’s good hearing. To tell the truth—and I’m no way hurting ye by saying it now—if Garth Valley were islanded by water, and ye and me and Gaunt were stranded on it—as folk are stranded time and time in those outlandish, heathen parts that David is going to, or says he is—why, me and ye, lile lass, would keep to one quarter o’ the dry land, and I’d ram my fist into Gaunt’s face if he came spying over to our end o’ the safe, high country. Couldn’t bide him, I, if there weren’t another man to talk to in the land.”
Priscilla scarcely heard him. Her glamour-tide was over, or seemed to be; David was unrepentant of his forthrightness, and would not see how she was hungering for the word, or the look, or the touch which only he could give.