"I am cold again, and very hungry. Send yond girl away," wailed the little woman.
"Does naught soften thee, lass?" said Wayne, glancing from his sister to the shrinking figure that held so closely fast to him.
"Naught," Nell answered, hard and cold. "The years will pass, and sorrows age, may be—but I shall never lose my hate of her."
"Yet think," he went on patiently. "She cleaves to me, Nell, and thou know'st how the fairy-kist bring luck to those they favour. 'Tis a good omen for the long fight that's coming."
"If pity does not move me, will a country proverb, think'st thou? Have thy way, Ned, since there's none to stay thee—but at the least take thy new friend from the death-room. Thou'lt see father turn and writhe if she stay longer by him, and 'tis my turn to watch the bier."
"Let's begone, little bairn. Haply thou'lt know here to find thy wearing-stuff if I take thee to the old room above," said Shameless Wayne, leading his step-mother to the door.
But Nell was fevered, and would not brook such prompt obedience to her wish. "Where are the lads?" she asked. "Frolicking, belike, when sober sitting within-doors would better have fitted the occasion."
Shameless Wayne turned on the threshold. "I sent them hawking," he answered, the new firmness gaining in his voice. "There's one claim of the dead, lass, and another of the living; and 'tis better they should brace their muscle for the days to come than sit moping over what is past."
"He grows masterful already. The shame has slipped clean off from him," murmured Nell, as she took a pair of snuffers from the mantel and trimmed the death-candles.
Yet Ned had not killed his shame. He was but battling with it, and the effort to show something like a man, in his own eyes at least, rendered his mood at once strangely tender and strangely savage. But he could find naught save tenderness for Mistress Wayne, as they climbed the wide stairway hand-in-hand and went in at the door of what had been his father's bed-chamber—his father's and that of the little woman by his side. She was no longer an unfaithful wife; she was a child, bewildered in the midst of enemies, and she had no friend but him.