"Every one, little bairn.—Now, see how stained your gown is with—with rain. I shall not love you at all if you do not run and change it before you come with me to supper."
"Not love me!" she repeated, with a look of doubt.—"Why, then, I'll change my gown thrice every day, because you are kind to me. No one else is kind to me, Ned. The wind buffets me, and rude men turn me forth of doors whenever I cross a threshold—save Sexton Witherlee, who was wondrous kind to me last night. All afternoon, Ned, I wandered about Marsh before I dared come in—I feared you would scowl at me, like the redmen of Wildwater." She turned, and in a moment she was clapping her hands for glee. "Look, look, Ned! Pretty candles—see'st thou how the shadows go playing hide-and-find-me up the walls?"
"They're bad shadows; have naught to do with them," said Shameless Wayne, turning her face to the hearth again and wondering to find what care he had for this frail woman's malady.
But she slipped from his hands, and ran forward to the bier, and was reaching out for one of the candles when its light showed her the pale face of Wayne of Marsh. The sight did not frighten her at all; but she stood mute and still, as if she were trying to understand in dim fashion that once this man had been her husband.
"Would he answer if I spoke to him? No, I think he would not; he looks too stern," Wayne heard her murmur. "I've seen that face—in dreams, long, long ago, it must have been. Perhaps he was my lover—strange that I should seek him all about the moor, when he was lying so quietly here."
"Come away, little bairn. He has no word for you," said her step-son, wearily.
Mistress Wayne halted a moment, then stooped and kissed the dead man's lips. And then she laughed daintily and rubbed her mouth with one forefinger. "Why does he not care!" she lisped. "His lips are cold as a beggar's welcome, Ned—we'll none of him, will we, thou and I?"
The door behind them opened and Nell Wayne came slowly across the floor until she stood within arm's reach of her step-mother. Scorn was in the girl's face, and a hatred not to be appeased.
"What brings this woman here?" she asked.
Mistress Wayne crept close to her protector. "All are cruel except thou, Ned. Keep her from me—she will turn me out into the cold again."