and severity of demeanour. 'It takes no great penetration to
guess who began it.'

'There's one thing I will say for him,' returned Lane; 'he's a
truth-telling fellow, to the best of my belief. Ask him who began it.
He'll tell you. Not that I should take any particular blame or shame for
having begun it myself, but since that's how you look at it, dear--why,
I should like you to be satisfied.'

'Do you think, Mr. Protheroe,' demanded Bertha, 'that it's the way to
win a girl's esteem to brawl about her in public on a Sunday?'

'That's what Thistlewood said,' Lane answered, with cunning simplicity.
'"It's unbecoming," said he, "in a man to brawl over the maid he wants
to marry."'

'I was certain he would say so, and think so,' returned Bertha, with a
sinking of the heart. She wanted grounds for pardoning Lane.

'Well,' said Lane, with a retrospective air, 'we talked for a while, and
he was good enough to promise me a hiding if I didn't keep out of his
way--meaning, of course, at your father's house. I didn't seem to take
it quite so meekly as he thought I ought to, and by and by says he, "You
seem to be in a hurry for that hiding." So I just made answer that hurry
was no word for it, and then, the pair of us being keen set, we got to
it. The day was an accident, and I daresay a piece of forgetfulness on
both our sides. But you see, my dear, a man's just as bound to guard his
self-respect on a Sunday as on a week-day.'

'I have been very deeply wounded,' said Bertha. 'I wished to respect
you both, and now I can respect neither of you. Good-morning, Mr.
Protheroe.'

Mr. Protheroe stood discomfited, and looked mournfully after her as she
walked away. When she had disappeared round the bend of the road he sat
down upon the bank and plucked grasses with mechanical fingers, turning
the thing up and down in his mind for an hour or thereabouts. Suddenly
he jumped to his feet and resumed his walk, smiling with head erect, and
that mellow whistle of his rose on the air with jollity in every note of
it, for it had broken upon his mind like sunshine to remember her first
exclamation on seeing him. He was a young man who was in the habit
of making sure of things, and he had never in his life been surer of
anything than he felt about this. The name, the tone, the look, meant
more than a common interest in him. She had called him 'Lane' for the
first time in his life. She had clasped her hands, and turned pale at
the sight of hi