“Am I here? Tut, lad, are ye here?”
“Aye, that is, are we both here?”
“Did ye think I wasn’t goin’ to be?” asked the wife, pausing.
“No-o, not that, only I thought, I thought ye was goin’—to—to faint. I thought ye looked like it,” replied Vavasour, with a curious expression of suppressed, intelligent joy in his eyes.
“Oh!” exclaimed Catherine. Then, suddenly, the happiness in her face was quenched. “But, lad, I’m a wicked woman, aye, Vavasour Jones, a bad woman!”
As Vavasour had poured himself out man unto man to Eilir, so woman unto man Catherine poured herself out to her husband.
“An’, lad, I went to the church-porch hopin’, almost prayin’ ye’d be called, that I’d see your spirit walkin’.”
“Catherine, ye did that!”
“Aye, but oh! lad, I’d been so unhappy with quarrelling and hard words, I could think of nothin’ else but gettin’ rid of them.”