, who spoke English to show she was
displeased, and there was in her voice a tone of satisfaction with her
own shrewdness. "When I saw you coming up the way there I thought there
was something very unlike the thing about this person with you. The
other one would have been a little closer on your elbow, and a lantern's
a very queer contrivance to be stravaiging with on a summer day."

All her contempt seemed to be for Gilian, and he felt mightily
uncomfortable.

"Tell me this," she went on, suddenly taking Nan by the arm and bending
a most condemnatory face on her; "tell mc this: did you run away from
the other one?"

"Mercy on me!" cried the girl. "Is the story up here already?"

"Oh, we're not so far back," said the dame, who did not add that her son
the seaman had told her the news on his last weekly visit.

"Then I'll need the less excuse for being here," said Nan, trying to
find in the hard and unapproving visage any trace of the woman who in
happier days used to be so kind a nurse.

"No excuse at all!" said old Elasaid. "If it's your father's wish you're
flying from, you need not come here." She stepped within the house,
pulled out the wattle door and between it and the fir post stuck a
disapproving face.

"Go away! go away!" she cried harshly, "I have no room for a baggage of
that kind." Then she shut the door in their faces; they could hear the
bar run to in the staples.

For a minute or two they stood aghast and silent, and Nan was
plainly close on tears. But the humour of the thing struck her quick
enough--sooner than Gilian saw it--and she broke into laughter, subdued
so that it might not reach the woman righteous within, and her ear maybe
at the door chink. It was not perhaps of the heartiest merriment, but
it inspired her companion with respect for her spirit in a moment so
trying. She was pale, partly with weariness, partly with distress at
this unlooked-for reception; but her lips, red and luscious, smiled for
his encouragement.

"Must we go back?" he asked, irresolute, as they made some slow steps
away from the door.

"Back!" said Nan, her eyes flashing. "Am I mad? Are you speaking for
yourself? If it must be back for you let me not be keeping you. After
all you bargained for no more than to take me to old Elasaid's, and now
that I'm here and there's none of the Elasaid I expected to meet me,
I'll make the rest of my way somewhere myself." But her gaze upon that
rolling and bleak moorland was