Causleen fingered the spray of crimson-berried hawthorn she had gathered for the breakfast-table in place of flowers. She put it into the jar, turned it this way and that till she was satisfied, then glanced up at Hardcastle.
“You can only be hurt through me nowadays. You care as much as that?”
“Yes. They can rob me of more than Logie now.”
“Garsykes knows. Gossip would tell them where you had hidden me—and what could two women and Brant do against them when they came—to rob you of me, and me of you?”
A great cavern opened in the man’s heart. All that was in her eyes, in the simple, candid words, broke into deeps that had not been stirred till now.
“I was sending you out of my reach?” he said, aghast at his own folly.
She came to him of her own accord, and crept close into his arms. “I could not bear it. I—I have only you—and we must be together.”
Hardcastle laughed by and by, soberly. “You’ll have to take charge of my wits,” he said. “They were never strong.”
Late that afternoon, Rebecca’s ailment left her as if by magic; and Hardcastle, returning from a journey up the far moors, encountered her at the gate.
“Tied to your bed no longer?” he asked dryly.