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neither more nor less. An equally delicate instinct forbade Gertrude to express all the joy which this assurance gave her. Excessive joy would have implied undue surprise; and it was a part of her plan frankly to expect the best things of her companion. "If you have been busy," she said, "I congratulate you. What have you been doing?" "O, a hundred things. I have been quarrying, and draining, and clearing, and I don't know what all. I thought the best thing was just to put my own hands to it. I am going to make a stone fence along the great lot on the hill there. Wallace is forever grumbling about his boundaries. I'll fix them once for all. What are you laughing at?" "I am laughing at certain foolish apprehensions that I have been indulging for a week past. You're wiser than I, Richard. I have no imagination." "Do you mean that _I_ have? I haven't enough to guess what you _do_ mean." "Why, do you suppose, have I come over this morning?" "Because you thought I was sulking on account of your having called me a fool." "Sulking, or worse. What do I deserve for the wrong I have done you?" "You have done me no wrong. You reasoned fairly enough. You are not obliged to know me better than I know myself. It's just like you to be ready to take back that bad word, and try to make yourself believe that it was unjust. But it was perfectly just, and therefore I have managed to bear it. I _was_ a fool at that moment,--a stupid, impudent fool. I don't know whether that man had been making love to you or not. But you had, I think, been feeling love for him,--you looked it; I should have been less than a man, I should be unworthy of your--your affection, if I had failed to see it. I did see it,--I saw it as clearly as I see those oxen now; and yet I bounced in with my own ill-timed claims. To do so was to be a fool. To have been other than a fool would have been to have waited, to have backed out, to have bitten my tongue off before I spoke, to have done anything but what I did. I have no right to claim you, Gertrude, until I can woo you better than that. It was the most fortunate thing in the world that you spoke as you did: it was even kind. It saved me all the misery of groping about for a starting-point. Not to have spoken as you did would have been to fail of justice; and then, probably, I should have sulked, or, as you very considerately say, done worse. I had made a false move in the game, and the only thing to
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