My daughter's man sent her words, and she has read them, and she will not answer. She told me so herself, proud as a hen. She holds the little glowing tablet, the one that shows faces from far off, a witch's thing surely, and she watches him wait. He knows she has read them.
There is some mark upon the glass that tells him so. And she leaves him there, twisting, the way a rabbit twists in the snare while you finish your row before you go and end it.
I have known cruelty. The winter takes the weak ones and does not ask. The bailiff takes the tithe and does not ask. But those are hungers with no malice in them. This is a cruelty a body must invent, having nothing else pressing upon it. She is warm. She is fed.
Her hands are soft as a lady's. And so she has gone looking for a small torment to keep, the way a child keeps a beetle in a cup.
I have never once made a man wait on my word, for my word was never worth the waiting. Nor have I had an idle hour to spend punishing a soul who loved me poorly. That is a rich man's game.
The good Lord fed her too well.
She has grown a fine new sin, and it costs her nothing, and that is how I know it will cost her dear.