“Something that brought burning to her cheeks. Do you think, because you’re Hardcastle of Logie, you can share a hut for the night with a lass and hear no more about it—snowstorm or no?”
“There are times,” he said slowly, “when I wonder why one or another of the Garsykes Men doesn’t cut out that tongue of yours and nail it where the gamekeeper——”
“Nails vermin?” said Nita gently. “I witch them, Hardcastle of Logie.”
Hardcastle longed to pass by, and could not. Surely what they said of her was false. She was so fresh and innocent, like a morning in mid-April.
“I witch them, Dick, and care for none—since you went out of my life.”
Again she was witching him, too. All that was rough and a man in him had asked always for a frail thing like Nita to guard—something that would need his strength and lean on it.
“They were good days, and I lost them,” she went on.
It was as if a net of cobwebs hindered him. She was close, and woe-begone, and pleading. Then he remembered how it had gone long since—his stormy, honest wooing—and the end of that good dream. He recalled the barren years, his loathing of all women for Nita’s sake—Nita’s, who had played him false.
“You’re of Garsykes,” he said, “and the new days are in.”
“I might have been of Logie once. I was a fool. Have you no pity, Dick?” She put a hand on his sleeve. “You’re built out of limestone rock—hard and unforgiving.”