When Robert had gone away, and she sat crying upon the moor, she felt indeed as if the whole world was slipping from her and that her life was finished. Only ruin, black, unutterable, stared her in the face. Oh, if only Robert had spoken sooner, she thought. If only that terrible beautiful night with its moonlight witchery had not been lived as it had been! If only something had intervened to prevent what had happened! And she sobbed in her despair, knowing what was before her and learning all too late, that Robert was the man she loved and wanted.
Then when her passionate grief had spent itself, she rose as she saw Peter coming hurriedly to meet her.
"What is the matter, Mysie?" he asked with real concern in his voice, noting the tear-stained face and her over-wrought condition. "What is it, Mysie?"
But Mysie did not answer just then, and they both turned and passed into the grove, walking separately, as if afraid of each other's touch, and something repellent keeping them apart.
They sat down, carefully avoiding the place where they had sat on that other fateful occasion, nearly a month before, and a long silence elapsed before words were again spoken.
"Now, Mysie," said Peter at last breaking the silence, and bracing himself to hear unpleasant news, "I want to know what is wrong. What is the matter?" and he feared to hear her tell her trouble.
But again only tears—tears and sobs, terrible in their intensity as if the frail little body would break completely under the strain of her grief.
"Mysie," he said, and his voice had a note of tender anxiety in it, "what is it, dear? Tell me."
"You shouldn't need to ask," she replied between her sobs. "You shouldn't need to ask when you should ken."
Again a long silence, and Peter felt he had got a heavy blow. A sickening feeling of shame smote his heart at the knowledge hinted at—a knowledge he had feared to learn.