“Aye, he thinks of them, I fancy. They nag at him, and small wonder. It’s a shame and a crying pity that he should let the race die out, for sake of such as Nita Langrish.”
“What was she like?”
“Like nothing honest—a face that put even women in mind of flowers and such trash—and great, grey eyes—and a heart as dry as Ghyll Beck after a droughty summer. But she did one good turn to Logie. I’ll own to that.”
Rebecca had not paused in her work. Like a mill-wheel, she could chatter without hindrance to the day’s labour.
“They go far back, the Hardcastles,” she went on, spreading dough on the baking-board and rolling it with quiet, unhurried hands. “Yeomen, they, and content with yeoman’s pride. Then they bought a croft here, a farmhouse there, till they got to be big in the land.”
Causleen began to understand many things about Hardcastle, now she held the key. His grim hostility to women was explained. So, too, was the rugged, inborn dignity that could meet all men frankly, yet hold them at a little distance. In days gone by, she had known Highland lairds who had shown just this will-proud front to clansmen of the misty homeland.
“And then?” she added, like a child impatient for the end of a nursery-tale.
“There come breaks in a line as long as Hardcastle’s—a spendthrift, a drunkard, one silly in his wits—there must be breaks. The Lord Almighty favours none, and long-settled folk must take their chances with the rest.”
Rebecca was of the homeland, too, to Donald’s girl. The Lord Almighty favoured none, as all men knew who had lived with mountains and the storm.
“She did a good turn to Logie, this Nita Langrish?” asked Causleen.