“Yes?”
“There’s one ill at the squire’s house. Ah!” cried Alison. “Do you look joyful?”
“No—no!” stammered Joan.
Taken by surprise, shaken and unstable as she was to-day, she gave back a step, lifted her hands to her forehead. As for Alison—Alison had not expected Joan to look joyful. She had spoken, burning her own heart, to make Joan feel the hot iron, knowing that the pang she gave would not be lasting, for truly it was but one of the maidservants at the great house that was stricken and not that person of overshadowing importance. She had believed with all her heart that it would smite Joan to the heart until she told her true—and now there had been in her face an awful joy, though at once it had shrunk back and something piteous had come instead. But it was the first look with which Alison was concerned. There went through her a keen hope like a knife-blade. Perhaps he no longer liked Joan!—perhaps that made Joan angry, hurting her vanity—so, perhaps she would have liked to hear that he was sick of the plague! Alison stood astare, revolving Joan’s look.
Cecily, who had never come before so close to Heron’s cottage, gazed about her. “And Katherine Scott says there’s something ‘no canny’ about the bees in your beehives. She says she had them while you were away to the castle, and they did naught for her and made, besides, her own bees idle and sick. But she says they make honey for you, great combs of it—”
“There is none that is sick at the squire’s house,” said Alison in a strange voice, “but Agnes, Madam Carthew’s woman. They’ve taken her from the house and put her in a room by the stable, and the family goes freely forth.—Why did you look as you were glad, Joan?”
“If I did, God forgive me!” said Joan. “In the deep of me there is no ill-wishing.—Presently, the leech says, it will be all safe here, as, indeed, it’s clean and sun-washed and safe to-day. Then I hope you’ll both come to see me—”
Cecily gave a gibing, elfin laugh. “Are you going to live here all alone—like a witch?”
The grey and white cat had advanced beyond Joan and now stood upon the sunny path between the daffodil points. What happened none of the three saw; perhaps a dog crossed the track behind the two visitors, perhaps the creature recognized human hostility—be that as it may, the cat suddenly arched its back, its hair rose, its mouth opened.