Alison came to the gate, Cecily with her. Joan no longer liked Alison, and with Cecily she had never had much acquaintance. But they were women and young, and the loneliness was terrible about her. She went halfway up the path toward them. The grey and white cat came from the cottage and followed her. Alison regarded her with a thin, flushed, shrewish face and an expression lifted, enlarged, and darkened beyond what might have seemed possible to her nature. But Alison had drunk deep from an acrid spring that drew in turn from a deep, perpetual fount. She spoke in a thin and cutting voice. “Watching and weeping haven’t taken the rose away.—What are you going to do now, Joan?” “I do not think,” said Joan, “that it is necessary to tell thee.” She looked past her to Cecily. “They say your sister died. I am sorry.” But Alison had put poison into Cecily’s mind. “Yes, she died. They do say that you would not be sorry if more of us died. Why people like you and—and Mother Spuraway should wish harm to us others—” “What are you talking of?” said Joan. “I wish no harm to any—” Cecily was an impish small piece with no especial evil in her save a teasing devil. “Oh, they say that you and a black man understand each other! Some boys told me—” “Nay, that’s naught, Cis!” said Alison impatiently. She came closer to the gate, and Joan, as though drawn against her will, approached from her side. “Joan—nay, don’t come any nearer, Joan—” “Yes?” “There’s one ill at the squire’s house. Ah!” cried Alison. “Do you look joyful?” “No—no!” stammered Joan. Taken by surprise, shaken and unstable as she was to-day, she gave back a step, lifted her hands to her forehead. As for Alison—Alison had not expected Joan to look joyful. She had spoken, burning her own heart, to make Joan feel the hot iron, knowing that the pang she gave would not be lasting, for truly it was but one of the maidservants at the great house that was stricken and not that person of overshadowing importance. She had believed with all her heart that it would smite Joan to the heart until she told her true—and now there had been in her face an awful joy, though at once it had shrunk back and something piteous had come instead. But it was the first look with which Alison was concerned. There went through her a keen hope like a knife-blade. Perhaps he no longer liked Joan!—perhaps that made Joan angry, hurting her vanity—so, perhaps she would have liked to hear that he was sick of the plague! Alison stood astare, revolving Joan’s look. Cecily, who had never come before so close to Heron’s cottage, gazed about her. “And Katherine Scott says there’s something ‘no canny’ about the bees in your beehives. She says she had them while you were away to the castle, and they did naught for her and made, besides, her own bees idle and sick. But she says they make honey for you, great combs of it—”