“It’s wrong, very wrong,” said the young man, and his eyes were still fixed on Norah. The girl wondered why he stared at her in such a manner. He was handsome to look upon, clean-skinned, dark-eyed, and well-dressed. She had never spoken to such a well-dressed man in all her life before; but she felt frightened at something which she could not understand and wished that the man was gone. An idea came to her that she was doing something very wrong, and with this idea came fear, fear of the unknown.
Gourock Ellen, elbows on knees, her hands crossed over her breast and her thumbs propping her chin, began to tell a story of one of her early love affairs; how a man would not pay and how she took away his clothes and vowed to send him out naked into the streets. Morrison listened attentively and Norah, who did not understand the story fully, and who was shocked at all she understood, wondered why the farmer’s son was not horrified at this episode in the life of Ellen.
About ten o’clock he rose to go and stood for a moment talking to Micky’s Jim at the card-table. Norah examined him attentively. He was well favoured and vigorous, and he spoke so nicely and quietly too!
“Dermod Flynn is makin’ a fortune,” Jim was saying. Alec Morrison went to the door; there he stood for a moment and looked back into the shed. Norah glanced at the youth; their eyes met and both felt that this was something which they desired.
Morrison’s simplicity, his interest in the squad and his kindly remarks, established a bond of sympathy between himself and Norah; but even yet she could not understand why such a well-dressed youth had visited the squalid shed in which the squad was staying. He seemed out of place; he could not feel at home in such dirty surroundings. And he had gazed so earnestly at her: in his eyes was a look of appeal, of entreaty. It seemed to Norah that it was in her power to bestow some favour on the youth, give him some precious gift that he desired very earnestly. Filled with a mixed emotion of pleasure and natural modesty, the girl wondered if all that had happened was real and if it had any significance for her.
“The way he looked at me!” she murmured in a puzzled voice. “And him a gentleman talking to us as if we were of his own kind! He must be very learned. And why didn’t Dermod Flynn stay with me here, not runnin’ away to them old cards!”
She glanced at Dermod, whose face was flushed and whose fingers trembled nervously as he placed a silver coin down on the gaming-table, and instinctively it was borne to her that something black and ugly had crept into the purity of the passion which attracted her towards the Glenmornan youth.
“The blame’s all on me,” she whispered, hardly realising what she was saying, and began to turn over in her mind every incident of the evening from the time when she first noticed Alec Morrison sitting by the fire up till the present moment.
“Did you see the way that the farmer’s son was watchin’ ye, Norah Ryan?” Maire a Glan asked. “His two eyes were on ye all the time. He’ll be havin’ a notion of ye.”
“That he will,” said Gourock Ellen, and both women laughed loudly.