“I was not tired at all until—until she stood there—stood on the threshold of our home-coming.”
A shadow crept, too, about Hardcastle and stayed with him as they came indoors, Causleen and he, and found Rebecca waiting for them.
“Step forrard,” said Rebecca. “It was time you married, Hardcastle of Logie.”
“How did you know?” he asked, wondering that there was no need to break the news.
Gaunt and straight, Rebecca stood facing them with a hard, roving glance. “How did I know, asks he, when I’ve given my life to watching his ins-and-outs? How could I help but know?”
On one side of the threshold Nita had met them. On the other stood this henchwoman, grief and jealousy showing in her sombre eyes. Against their will, a sense of doom crept out from Logie’s storied walls, chilling their eager wedlock.
“I kept young for you, Master,” went on Rebecca, “till you found a bride for Logie. And now I’ll let myself grow old.”
“I’d have told you our errand——”
She cut short his troubled words. “You would, but for thinking of old Rebecca. The blow would fall softer, you fancied, if you brought a full-fledged wife, instead of letting me wait all day for a promised one. Men, poor lambs, are not good at breaking news, and never were.”
Her tart humour swept him like a moorland breeze through the gloom she had brought about these two.