The blacksmith forced a short laugh.
“You'd best go and hire yourself to the Quakers. They would welcome a woman preacher, no doubt.”
She would have bartered away years of her life at this instant for one glimpse of what was going on in that man's heart. If she had found corruption there, sin and crime, she would have thanked God for it as for manna from above. Rotha clutched the keys beneath her cloak and subdued her anger.
“You scarce seem yourself to-day, Mr. Garth,” she said.
“All the better,” he replied, with a mocking laugh. “I've heard that they say my own sel' is a bad sel'.”
The words were hardly off his lips when he turned again sharply and faced Rotha with an inquiring look. He had reminded himself of a common piece of his mother's counsel; but in the first flash of recollection it had almost appeared to him that the words had been Rotha's, not his.
The girl's face was as tender as a Madonna's.
“Maybe I am a little bit out of sorts to-day; maybe so. I've felt daizt this last week end; I have, somehow.”
Rotha left him a minute afterwards. Continuing her journey, she drew the bunch of keys from under her cloak and examined them.
They were the same that she had found attached to Wilson's trunk on the night of her own and Mrs. Garth's visit to the deserted cottage at Fornside. There were perhaps twenty keys in all, but two only bore any signs of recent or frequent use. One of these was marked with a cross scratched roughly on the flat of the ring. The other had a piece of white tape wrapped about the shaft. The rest of the keys were worn red with thick encrustation of rust. And now, by the power of love, this girl with the face of an angel in its sweetness and simplicity—this girl, usually as tremulous as a linnet—was about to do what a callous man might shrink from.