'Eh,' said Gyda. 'Yes, to please who, dear?'
Hazel put up one little hand and laid it upon Gyda's, so giving her answer.
'Because,' she began again presently, 'I had thoughtit had seemed as ifmaybe_that_ was the reason of it all. Do such things come upon people for doing wrong things, when they do not know they are wrong?'
'Mayhap,' said Gyda, who through the obscurities of this speech threaded her way to one thing only. 'It's only the straight way, dear, that has no crooks in it. But seeisn't my lad's lady in the straight way?'
'But I meanI do not know how to tell you,' she said, covering her face with her hands. 'When he had grown so goodand I had not,I thought, perhaps, that was the reason. I thought of it last winter, before this came; and I have never seen him sincebut once. I might seemdifferentto him, you know,' Hazel added, in her girlish way. Then she took her hands down and looked at Gyda, searching for her answer. But Gyda gently smiled.
'I think you'll soon know,' she said. 'Suppose you don't think any more about it, till he comes.'
Hazel was silent a few minutes, but thinking all the while as hard as she could. She was in no hurry now for Mr. Rollo to come; her dread of seeing him again was extreme. And by this time another matter claimed her attention, over and above everything else; she must get home while she could. If physical prostration and reaction went on at the rate they had begun, it would not take much longer to make the scramble over the hill a sheer impossibility.
'I must go,' she said abruptly. 'But you will let me come once more?'
Gyda was about to answer, when she turned her head sharply towards the door. Her ears caught a sound in that direction, and the next instant Wych Hazel's ears caught it too; the sound of steps, quick steps, a man's steps, coming along the flag-stones outside the cottage. A hand on the door, the door open, and Rollo himself was there.