"Yes?"
"Doesn't it seem as if Fate meant us to come together—you and I? The world has dealt very ill with both of us thus far. But you are a woman and I am a man; and only give me the right to fight for you——"
As he spoke he saw the tears spring to her eyes, and he paused and his wandering fingers found the hand that hung by her side.
"Greeba!" he cried again, but she stopped the hot flow of the words that she saw were coming.
"Leave me now," she said. "Don't speak to me to-day; no, not to-day, Jason. Go—go!"
He obeyed her without a word, and picking up his cap from where it had fallen at his feet, he left her sitting there with her face covered by her hands.
She had suddenly bethought herself of Michael Sunlocks; that she had pledged her word to wait for him, that she had written to him and that his answer might come at any time. Next day she went down to the post-office at Ramsey to inquire for a letter. None had yet come for her, but a boat from the Shetlands that might fetch mails from Iceland would arrive within three days. Prompt to that time she went down to Ramsey again, but though the boat had put into harbor and discharged its mails there was still no letter for her. The ordinary Irish trader between Dublin and Reykjavik was expected on its homeward trip in a week or nine days more, and Greeba's heart lay low and waited. In due course the trader came, but no letter for her came with it. Then her hope broke down. Sunlocks had forgotten her; perhaps he cared for her no longer; it might even be that he loved some one else. And so with the fall of her hope her womanly pride arose, and she asked herself very haughtily, but with the great tears in her big dark eyes, what it mattered to her after all. Only she was very lonely, and so weary and heart-sick, and with no one to look to for the cheer of life.
She was still at Lague, where her eldest brother was now sole master, and he was very cold with her, for he had taken it with mighty high dudgeon that a sister of his should have used the law against him. So, feeling how bitter it was to eat the bread of another, she had even begun to pinch herself of food, and to sit at meals but rarely.
But Jason came again about a fortnight after the trial, and he found Greeba alone as before. She was sitting by the porch, in the cool of the summer evening, combing out the plaits of her long brown hair, and looking up at Barrule, that was heaving out large and black in the sundown, with a nightcap of silver vapor over its head in the clouds.
"I can stay away no longer," he said, with his eyes down. "I've tried to stay away and can't, and the days creep along. So think no ill of me if I come too soon."