The peewits screamed about her, and the empty basket was still swinging on her arm; and now and then from very habit, she cast a glance about her in search of the eggs which she had promised to bring back to Wildwater. But Marsh was in her mind, and with each mile her stride grew longer, her carriage firmer. She was to see Ned, and after that she would let come what would. Soon she came in sight of Hill House standing bluff on the further slope of Hazel Dene, and a song rose unbidden to her lips; for Hill House held kinsmen of her lover’s, and it was scarce more than half a league from Marsh. Janet was nearer to the truth than perchance she guessed; for Nell’s love of her brother, the slow growth of years of thwarted hopes and bitter self-denial, was firm as the rock on which Marsh House was built. He had been a ruffler and a drunkard, so wild that his name had grown a by-word among folk who were not easily moved by any usual excesses of the gentry; he had all but killed the last spark of love and trust in her; and now, just when he had cast off old ways, and had stood up, a man, before scorn and intimate, hourly danger and the slow round of farm-work which he loathed—now, it seemed that all was to go for naught because of his love for one of the accursed folk who dwelt at Wildwater. Jealous she would have been of any wife, but it was shame unspeakable to think that Janet might ever take her place at Marsh; and she was full of the matter this morning as she and Shameless Wayne walked up the fields together. "Ned," she cried, breaking an uneasy silence, "dost recall how once I asked thee about Mistress Ratcliffe? Thou said’st then it was a folly laid aside, yet now——" "Well, now?" he said, in a hard voice. "I have heard that not long since thou wast with her on the moor, stooping more closely to her ear than friendship alone warranted." "’Twas Hiram Hey told thee as much? He’s the wise sort of fool who must hunt out the wrong side to every trivial matter." "Nay, it is common gossip by this time. I had it from Nanny Witherlee, who has loved us well enough, Ned, thee and me, to allow of freedom in her speech. She is of my mind, too—that the last and worst disaster would fall on Marsh if——" "If the clouds dropped, or the sun shone bright at midnight?" he broke in stormily. "I have told thee, Nell, that there is naught between us now—can be naught. Dost want to hear me swear it?" "Yet thou lov’st her," she said, with the keen glance of jealousy. "Ay, as I love the good life in my veins," he answered, his voice deepening. "But what of that? Even life must go, soon or late; am I a woman, to think love the one thing that must not be crushed?"