Nay, had he come home to find her a widow, even so all might
yet perhaps have been well. But now, when, with his own eyes, he had
seen what, manner of man she had preferred to him, the old love was
killed--killed by her act.
The clatter of his departing horse's feet rang loud in her ears; and
now, great as of old had been her detestation of the man to whom she was
tied, it was but a feeble flame in comparison with the furnace of hate
that began to rage in her heart. Daily and hourly the anguish of the
"might have been" tormented her. Incessantly the words her lover had
spoken seethed in her brain: "If even you had been a widow," he had
said. "A widow?" ... Ever to the same word her thoughts returned--"a
widow." What if he were to die now? If only...! Then she thought of the
bitten hand. Was it not more than likely that the dog was mad when,
unprovoked, it bit a man? And if it _were_ mad ... But assuredly it was
mad! She would ask old Elspeth. Who so wise as Elspeth, who so skilled
as she in the treatment of wounds? And if she could _cure_ wounds, why
... perhaps...! Did not wounds sometimes refuse to heal, and did not
the patient sometimes gradually sink and die without anybody being to
blame?
But no comfort was found in Elspeth--no help.
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