"Banff! Will she be gone for long?"
She hardly realized that her lips were quivering and her eyes were so full of tears that she could not see the strange expression on the Bull's face as he looked down gloatingly upon her.
The soft golden sunset was all about them and the brooding hush of the closing day lent a beauty and stillness to the evening that was full of poetry, but the man, with his calculating, bulging eyes, saw nothing but her softly maturing loveliness, the rounded curve of her bosom, the white softness of her neck, the rose that came and went in her cheeks, the scarlet lips that aroused in his breast a tormenting passion such as he had never experienced for any woman before.
Nettie repeated her question, her voice catching in the sob that would come despite her best efforts. With the going of both Cyril and her mistress she felt deserted and forlorn.
"Will she be gone long I asked you?"
"Long enough to suit me," said the Bull slowly. "She's took a holiday. Guess she's entitled to one now we've got a gell like you to take her place up to the house. I'm thinking you'll fill the bill fine and suit me down to a double T. Is supper ready?"
She stared up at him through the haze before her eyes, piteously, her lips moving, almost as if entreating him. She tried to say:
"It'll be on the table in a few minutes," but the words came indistinctly through the tears which now began to fall heavily in spite of her effort to restrain them. Blindly she moved toward the house, holding her apron to her face. Absorbed in her grief, she was unconscious of the fact that the Bull pressed close to her side and that it was his big hand under her arm that guided her to the house. Inside the kitchen he held her for a space as she gasped and cried:
"I won't stay here alone."
"Yer don't have to, gell," said the Bull huskily. "I'm here."