"But the Ratcliffes have no such good repute? Nay! I know what was on thy tongue, Ned." Her face grew clouded, and a sudden, bitter cry escaped her. "Would God, dear lad, that it were different!" she cried.
Wayne's grasp tightened on her hand as he drew her half toward him. "There's a quaking bog, Janet, lies 'twixt what a man would and what he will," he cried. "God's life, girl, why must we always look askance at happiness?"
The words were forced from him, and under them was such a ring of passion as Janet had hungered for during many a long day of misery and dread that she had lately spent at Wildwater. This was a glimpse of the Ned she loved--hot, and eager, and rebellious. She had given all to him--shame and love of kin; and she was justified, whatever followed after. She would force him to tell her the secret that showed plain enough in eyes and voice; and then, if his sternness came again, she would not heed it.
"_We_ have no feud, Ned, thou and I," she said, in the voice that once before the quarrel ripened, he had been free to hearken to.
For a moment he wavered, looking down at her. Behind her a sweep of blue leaned to the shoulders of the heath. The throstle's note came low and mellow from below, and in the sun's eye larks were singing wildly. Slim, warm and sweet she stood, a Ratcliffe and a maid.
Shameless Wayne had fought this battle once before, and thought to have killed desire; yet the struggle when he had met her by the kirk-stone, weeks ago, was but the beginning of an uphill road. It was as Nell had said, not an hour since, and this thing called love had fifty ways of ambush for a man.
"Hark ye, Janet," he said at last. "There shall no feud stand between us; 'twas of their making, and I love thy little finger better----"
He freed her on the sudden; his eyes went out far across the moor, and into them there leaped a fierceness and a dread.
"What is't? I saw dead Wayne of Marsh come up the slope, with blood on his wearing-gear and sorrow on his face."
"There 'twas a fancy, girl," he said, huskily. "We'll think no more on 't.--Here is the nesting-ground; and, see, I all but trode on the first pair of eggs."
She answered nothing but stooped for the blue-white eggs that lay on the bare ground at her feet. Each welcomed the excuse for silence, and each went gravely forward with the search. But neither the tragic thought of the dead master of Marsh, nor yet Ned's chill withdrawal from her glance, could make Janet less than glad that she had come to Hazel Brigg. He loved her, and by and by she would carry back the knowledge to lighten her footsteps home to Wildwater.