But Janet, swinging free across the moor, was strangely light of heart. The deceit that had lain between herself and Nicholas was to be lifted once for all, whatever might be the upshot, and there was no longer any secret by force of which Red Ratcliffe could press his suit. Not for a moment did she doubt that her cousin would fulfil his threat; the Lean Man's wrath she regarded as awaiting her already at Wildwater, and she had learned not to underrate its fury. But by some means she would fight them, for her own sake and for Shameless Wayne's; and she came of a stock to whom battle had ever been what the wind was to the storm-birds who hovered the year about the chimney-stacks of Wildwater.
She would go straight down to Marsh, she told herself, and ask for its Master. The servants would wonder, doubtless, and the moorside gossip would be fed by the strange tale of how a daughter of the Ratcliffes had come to seek her people's enemy; but what did gossips matter now that she had declared open warfare with her folk? There was a grim reckoning for her at Wildwater, and she did not shrink from it for her own sake; but Shameless Wayne must be kept out of danger's way, and see him she must before returning if he had to be sought from Marsh to Cranshaw.
Janet laughed on the sudden, as she crossed the rough stretch of moor that lay this side of Withens. She was to see Shameless Wayne before the sun went down, and to do him a last service; and the lark's song overhead found a blithe answer in her heart. Then, too, the moor was in joyous mood, and no upland tarn ever reflected the sky's face more faithfully than Janet echoed the shifting humours of this big-little world of hers. No year went by but she learned all afresh how rare and bewildering a thing was springtime on the moor; so warm it was, so full of a thousand clean-cut scents, of wind and peat, of ling and standing waters. The bilberries, with their green and crimson leaves, lay bushy to the sunlight, which shone reflected in tints of amethyst or ruby, pearl or daintiest saffron. The crowberries, which had shown a surly green the winter through, put on new livery, and all down their serried stems the brown-red blossoms peeped. A stray bee loitered down the wind, and cloudlets lay like snow above the blue edge of the heath.