Without a word the girl pointed to the door. And such was the force of her white anger and scorn upon him that Wat Gordon, who was about to ride carelessly to face death as he had often done before, slunk through it cowering and speechless.
Maisie was coming along the little boarded passage as he passed out.
"Farewell, cousin," she said to him. "Will you not bid me good-bye again ere you go, if only for the old sake's sake?"
But Wat Gordon went past her as though he had not heard, trampling stupidly down the narrow stairs like a bullock in the market-place, the spring all gone out of his foot, the upstanding airy defiance fallen away from his carriage.
Then in a moment more there came up from the street front the sound of trampling horses and the ring of accoutrement, as three or four riders set spurs to their horses and rode clattering over the cobbles towards the city gates.
Maisie went quickly into the sitting-room to her friend.
"What have you been doing to my Wat?" she asked, grasping her tightly by the arm. "Have you quarrelled with him?"
Kate was standing behind the shutter, looking down the street along which the four riders were rapidly vanishing. At the corner where they turned one of the horses shied and reared, bringing down its iron-shod hoofs sharply on the pavement with a little jet of sparks, and almost throwing its rider. Instinctively the girl uttered a little cry, and set her hand against her side.
"What said Wat to you, dearest Kate," asked Maisie, again, altering the form of her question, "that you sent him thus speechless and dumfoundered away? He passed me at the stair-head as if he knew me not."
Finding Kate still absorbed and silent, Maisie sat down in her own chair and waited. Presently, with a long sigh, the girl sank on her knees beside her, and, taking her friend's hand, set it on her head. With sympathetic and well-accustomed fingers Maisie, as was her custom, softly smoothed and caressed the dark tangle of curls. She did not utter a word till she heard a quick sob catch at the bottom of Kate's throat. Then she spoke very low, leaning forward till she could lay her cheek against the girl's brow.