“Oh, Aunt Kirsteen, make him happy again! Stop that awful haunting and keep him from all this!”
Kirsteen had listened, with one foot on the hearth in her favorite attitude. When the girl had finished she said quietly:
“I'm not a witch, Nedda!”
“But if it wasn't for you he would never have started. And now that poor Tryst's dead he would leave it alone. I'm sure only you can make him lose that haunted feeling.”
Kirsteen shook her head.
“Listen, Nedda!” she said slowly, as though weighing each word. “I should like you to understand. There's a superstition in this country that people are free. Ever since I was a girl your age I've known that they are not; no one is free here who can't pay for freedom. It's one thing to see, another to feel this with your whole being. When, like me, you have an open wound, which something is always inflaming, you can't wonder, can you, that fever escapes into the air. Derek may have caught the infection of my fever—that's all! But I shall never lose that fever, Nedda—never!”
“But, Aunt Kirsteen, this haunting is dreadful. I can't bear to see it.”
“My dear, Derek is very highly strung, and he's been ill. It's in my family to see things. That'll go away.”
Nedda said passionately:
“I don't believe he'll ever lose it while he goes on here, tearing his heart out. And they're trying to get me away from him. I know they are!”