“What did you mean by a fatal step?”
“That she might leave me and seek the protection of the Tribe. We have had words about this. Kettie says little, but I see the signs of determination in her silent face. ‘I will not have you meet or speak to that man,’ I said to her this morning—for she was out with him last evening also. She made me no reply: but—you see—how she has obeyed! Her heart’s life has been awakened, and by him. There’s only one object to whom she clings now in all the whole earth; and that is to him. I am nothing.”
“He will not bring any great harm upon her: you need not fear that of Hyde Stockhausen.”
“Did I say he would?” she answered fiercely, her black eyes glaring and gleaming. “But he will bring sorrow on her and rend her heart-strings. A man’s fancies are light as the summer wind, fickle as the ocean waves: but when a woman loves it is for life; sometimes for death.”
Hyde and Kettie had disappeared at the upper end of the dell, taking the way that in a minute or two would bring them out in the open fields. Ketira turned back along the narrow path, and I with her.
“I knew he would bring some ill upon me, that first moment when I saw him on Worcester race-ground,” resumed Ketira in a low tone of pain. “Instinct warned me that he was an enemy. And what ill can be like that of stealing my young child’s heart! Once a girl’s heart is taken—and taken but to be toyed with, to be flung back at will—her day-dreams in this life are over.”
Emerging into the open ground, the first thing we saw was the pair of lovers about to part. They were standing face to face: Hyde held both her hands while speaking his last words, and then bent suddenly down, as if to whisper them. Ketira gave a sharp cry at that, perhaps she fancied he was stealing a kiss, and lifted her right hand menacingly. The girl ran swiftly in the direction of her home—which was not far off—and Hyde strode, not much less quickly, towards his. Ketira stood as still as a stone image, watching him till he disappeared within his gate.
“There’s no harm in it,” I persuasively said, sorry to see her so full of trouble. But she was as one who heard not.
“No harm at all, Ketira. I dare answer for it that a score of lads and lasses are out. Why should we not walk in the moonlight as well as the sunlight? For my part, I should call it a shame to stay indoors on this glorious night.”