"Yes."
She stood uncertainly looking at him, a pitiful, quivering emotion in her eyes; then she moved away.
"Good-bye," he said, mechanically, hearing the brush of her garments as she left the room.
"Good-bye," she said.
Deirdre saw that Mrs. Cameron's cheeks were wet with tears when she climbed into the buggy again. She did not speak, but drove silently away.
Deirdre had been rubbing Bess's nose and feeding her with handfuls of grass. When she went back to the kitchen her father was sitting with his arms over the side of his chair, his head on them. She flew to him; her arms entwined him. But he pushed her away, with unconscious roughness.
"Go away!" he whispered.
An angry pain at his grief, at Mrs. Cameron who in some way had been the cause of it, surged through Deirdre.
Pete M'Coll rode into the yard. He threw his bridle over the hitching post.
"Any news?" Deirdre asked.