"She's passing dear to the Lean Man, too," he muttered. "He'll be loath to turn against her as it is—and 'twould only discredit the tale I have to tell him if I used force. Well, let her go. Haply she will not set eyes on Shameless Wayne."
Yet twice he started in pursuit; and when at last she had dipped over the nearest hill-crest, his bitterness would not be held in check.
"I offered her honest love, and she refused it," he cried, kicking the peat up with his heel in senseless frenzy. "God curse her, she shall not wed Wayne of Marsh till thistle-tops grow wheat."
But Janet, swinging free across the moor, was strangely light of heart. The deceit that had lain between herself and Nicholas was to be lifted once for all, whatever might be the upshot, and there was no longer any secret by force of which Red Ratcliffe could press his suit. Not for a moment did she doubt that her cousin would fulfil his threat; the Lean Man's wrath she regarded as awaiting her already at Wildwater, and she had learned not to underrate its fury. But by some means she would fight them, for her own sake and for Shameless Wayne's; and she came of a stock to whom battle had ever been what the wind was to the storm-birds who hovered the year about the chimney-stacks of Wildwater.
She would go straight down to Marsh, she told herself, and ask for its Master. The servants would wonder, doubtless, and the moorside gossip would be fed by the strange tale of how a daughter of the Ratcliffes had come to seek her people's enemy; but what did gossips matter now that she had declared open warfare with her folk? There was a grim reckoning for her at Wildwater, and she did not shrink from it for her own sake; but Shameless Wayne must be kept out of danger's way, and see him she must before returning if he had to be sought from Marsh to Cranshaw.
Janet laughed on the sudden, as she crossed the rough stretch of moor that lay this side of Withens. She was to see Shameless Wayne before the sun went down, and to do him a last service; and the lark's song overhead found a blithe answer in her heart. Then, too, the moor was in joyous mood, and no upland tarn ever reflected the sky's face more faithfully than Janet echoed the shifting humours of this big-little world of hers. No year went by but she learned all afresh how rare and bewildering a thing was springtime on the moor; so warm it was, so full of a thousand clean-cut scents, of wind and peat, of ling and standing waters. The bilberries, with their green and crimson leaves, lay bushy to the sunlight, which shone reflected in tints of amethyst or ruby, pearl or daintiest saffron. The crowberries, which had shown a surly green the winter through, put on new livery, and all down their serried stems the brown-red blossoms peeped. A stray bee loitered down the wind, and cloudlets lay like snow above the blue edge of the heath.
It was the time of year when Janet ceased looking across the endless spaces of the moor, and turned her eyes to the lesser miracles that showed at every step. Month after month the waste had shown itself a giant of awful majesty, whose breath was storm, whose heart was pitiless; and now—lo, this moor was full of little housewife's cares, cleaning her floors of last year's litter, suckling her young like any human mother, neglecting no hidden corner where blade or flower was thirsting for her milk.
Past Robin Hood's Well the girl went, and across the beck, and over the moor this side of Withens; and as she went she thought that surely Wayne of Marsh must lose a little of his sternness under such skies as these. Nay, she smiled as she looked toward the far-off brink of moor under which Marsh House lay hidden.
"If not for myself, he'll love me for my news, may be," she said, and smiled again as she thought of what might chance when she knocked at the door of the Marsh House and asked for Shameless Wayne. How if his sister Nell should open to her and ask her business? Once already they had met, she and Nell, since the feud broke out; and Nell had taunted her with outright bitterness; and they had not parted till deep wounds had been given and received on either side.
"Were she to open to me," murmured Janet, "she would rive a spear down from the walls and thrust me out, for fear another than she should help Ned into safety. Well, I must risk that, too—but I had liefer meet the Lean Man than this same Mistress Nell. Love is jealous, they say—but for madness it is naught to this quiet, sisterly affection."