With beating heart she stole away from the circle already breaking up into whispering groups, and, having donned her cloak with the scarlet berries still clinging to its breast, she made her way out at a side door, and walked hurriedly down the path till she saw her brother waiting for her beneath the shadow of the snow-laden trees.
At sight of him her tense mood broke suddenly, and bursting into tears, she threw herself into his arms.
"Oh, Kit! Kit! Tell me about it! Who is he? What is he to us? Why dost thou look so white and strange?"
Christopher Neville swallowed hard, and moved his lips without utterance.
"My heart is troubled," he said, speaking to himself rather than Peggy, and then fell to repeating the words of the psalm: "My friends and my neighbors have drawn near and stood against me. And they that were near me stood afar off."
With round eyes Peggy watched him sadly, sure that he was in a fever, and wishing she had brought her aunt's medicaments of herbs and sweet waters from St. Mary's. "Come, Christopher," she said gently, "come into the house. There is naught amiss—thou art walking under the shadow of a bad dream."
For an instant he faced her in silence. Then at last his words came out, swift and compelled as if shot from a cannon.
"Little sister," he said, "a sudden trouble has fallen on my life, and almost the saddest part of it is that it is like to darken thine too. I would to God," he cried with sudden bitterness, "I had never brought thee over seas."
"Am I in thy way?"
"No! no!—rather art thou the only comfort I have to turn to."