"Then, sir, you would liefer see her wedded to Wayne of Marsh than to me?" broke in the other hotly. "They call _him_ Shameless, but by the Mass this girl would hold the title with better credit. See how she stands there, with an open front and a clear eye, and all the while she knows----"
"Sir, my cousin has gone through it all before," said Janet, deftly taking up the talk as Red Ratcliffe paused for very anger. "I said nay to him this morning; and he turned and snarled on me, vowing he would tell you how I met Shameless Wayne willingly by stealth. Has he done so, or was he still finding wit enough to carry the tale through when I came up?"
"I said the tale went lame," muttered Nicholas; "ay, I knew there could be naught in 't."
"Did he tell you, sir," went on Janet merrily, "did he tell you that Wayne of Marsh was whispering love-tales in my ear, and that I was listening with greedy relish? He threatened so to do; because, forsooth, he had asked me a plain question, and my answer liked him little."
Red Ratcliffe had made many a useless effort to claim a hearing, but he could see by the Lean Man's face that the tide was running all against him.
"He thought I should be feared of you, grandfather!" cried Janet, laughing softly. "He thought I should not dare to come with a straight tale to you as he came with a crooked."
Nicholas, eager beforehand to keep his trust in the girl unshaken, let his last doubts fall off from him. "Thou wast right, child, to trust me," he said. "This fool here got his word in first, and if thou hadst not told me of thy meeting with Wayne before ever I twitted thee with it--why, I might well have believed that which would have gone nigh to break my heart."
For a moment the girl's eyes clouded and she could not look him in the face. He was so kind to her, so ready to take her part at all times; and she was rewarding his trust in sorry fashion. But that passed as she remembered the Lean Man's cruelty, his guile, his resolve to do Shameless Wayne to death by any sort of treachery. Was it a time to stand on scruples, when she was fighting, not for her own life, but for another's? Again her mother-love for Wayne swept over her, touching her fancy with a sense of fine issues that were to be compassed, here and now, by her own unaided wit.