His tone puzzled her, and she went on, curious, perhaps, to probe his real feelings.
"You are glad?"
"Glad? I should never have returned but for one thing—the memories of the place are too unpleasant."
A faint and delicate tinge of colour came into the woman's face, for she did not doubt that he was thinking of her and the shattered romance of the past. It moved her to think that, after all these years, this memory was still fresh with him.
"Why darken your home-coming by thoughts of the unalterable past?" she answered softly. "It is all forgotten and forgiven now."
"It is not forgotten, neither is it forgiven—I am not that sort."
A deeper colour flooded her face. He considered himself wronged, then, that she had believed in his guilt and married his brother. At that moment she wished passionately to justify herself in his eyes, for this stranger who had been her lover was beginning to exercise an ascendancy over her weaker nature that he had never possessed in the old days.
She was about to stammer out words of excuse and apology, when McPhulach turned round and leaned over the wind-screen.
"Hae ye such a thing as a match aboot ye, skeeper?" he inquired.
Calamity tossed him a box of matches, whereupon McPhulach produced a well-worn briar from his pocket and transferred it to his mouth.