'I'm glad to be left alone with you for a minute, Miss Fellowes,' he began gently, and with a faint tremor and hesitation in his voice, 'because I've something very special and particular to say to you.'

There he paused, and Bertha with a slight cough, which was a trifle too casual and unembarra.s.sed to be real, said, 'Indeed, Mr. Protheroe?' and kept her eyes upon the book.

'They say a girl always knows,' he went on, 'and if that's true you know already what I want to say.'

He paused, but if he expected any help from her in the way either of a.s.sent or denial, he was disappointed. He stooped a little lower and touched her hand with a gentle timidity, but she at once withdrew it.

'You know I love you, Bertha? You know you're dearer to me than all the whole wide world beside?'

Still Bertha said nothing, but the hand that turned the leaves of the book trembled perceptibly.

'I've come to ask you if you'll be my wife, dear! if you'll let me make you my lifelong care and joy, my darling! You don't guess how much I love you. You don't know how much your answer means to me.'

The girl rose, and, carrying the book with her, walked to the kitchen window and looked out upon the garden, the river, and the fields, without seeing anything. She was evidently agitated, and did not find an answer easily. Lane followed her, and when for a moment she dared to look up at him she encountered a look so tender, anxious, and ardent that she lowered her eyes in quick confusion. He seized her hand, and for a brief instant she let it rest in his.

'Speak to me,' he murmured, caressingly and pleadingly. 'Tell me.'

'I don't understand you, Mr. Protheroe,' the girl said pantingly.

'Not understand me, dear? 'he whispered; 'I am asking you to be my wife.'

'I understand that,' she answered, drawing herself away from him, and speaking with difficulty. 'It is _you_ I don't understand.

You--yourself.'

'Tell me how, darling,' he said softly.

'You tell me,' she said, lifting a pale and agitated face, 'that I can't guess how much my answer means to you. But you come here whistling and dancing, as you always come, as if you hadn't a care upon your mind.'

'Don't make that a reproach against me, dear,' said he. 'Why it was just the thought of you made me so happy.'

She looked up at him with an expression of doubt and pain, and as their eyes met he caught one of her hands in both his, and held it.

'Dear Bertha!' he said, with a sudden moisture in his eyes. 'There is n.o.body so good. There is n.o.body so lovely.'

She drew away from him again, though some sort of electric influence seemed to come out of him, and draw her strongly to him.

'I must wait,' she said. 'I--I don't know you well enough. I don't understand you. You are too light. You are too careless. I don't know how far I can believe you.'

'Oh!' he cried, 'believe me altogether, dear. I love you with all my heart and soul!'

She moved to the middle of the room, and sheltered herself behind a table which stood there.

'I hardly know whether you have a heart,' she answered then. 'You fancy you feel all you say,' she added quickly. 'You feel it for the minute.'

He stood at the other side of the table with brows suddenly grown gloomy.

'I shall feel it all my life,' he said. 'It's the one thing I've ever been in earnest about. I never thought I should feel as I do. If you like to wait, dear, before answering me, I'll wait just as long as ever you please.' His gloom was gone, and he was all eagerness and vivacity again. 'There's nothing I won't do for your asking. I'll cure every fault I've got. I'll be everything you'd like to have me. Try me, darling. Wait and see. But give me only just a little bit of hope. Don't send me away quite hungry. Tell me you care for me just a little--not as I care for you--I don't expect that. It doesn't stand to reason yet awhile you should.'

There she shot one swift glance at him, averting her gaze at once.

'I won't say I don't like you,' she answered with a candour half rustic, half characteristic of herself 'But I won't answer yes or no just yet.'

'Very well, dear,' he answered tenderly. 'You shall have time to know if I'm in earnest, or if I've taken nothing more than a pa.s.sing fancy.

Shall I ask you again this day six months?'

'I won't promise you an answer then,' she said. 'I will answer you when I am certain.'

'You could care for me, then,' he urged her, 'if you were only quite sure I loved you, and always would love you? Why, Bertha, I'd put my hand in that fire to save you from a finger-ache. I'd jump into the Weale there if I thought I could make you happy by doing it. I'd live my whole life your servant for a smile a year.'

His eyes flashed or moistened with every phrase, his gestures were superabundant and intense, and his voice was genuinely tender and impa.s.sioned.

His ardent eyes and voice thrilled the girl, and yet she doubted him.

There was a fear in her mind which she could not shake away.

People in Beacon Hargate were not rich in opportunities for the study of the acted drama, but Bertha had seen a play or two in the great town hard by, and Lane looked and talked rather too much like a stage lover to her mind. In the unreal life behind the footlights lovers talked with just such a fluency, just such a tender fiery emphasis. In real life John Thistlewood came doggedly a-wooing with a shoulder propped against a doorpost, and had hard work to find a word for himself. If only that one absent element of faith could be imported into the business, Lane Protheroe's fashion of courting was certain to be infinitely more delightful than John Thistlewood's, but then the absent element was almost everything. And for poor Bertha the worst part of it seemed that she loved the man she doubted, and could not love the man in whose affection she held the profoundest faith. That the rough, clumsy, and persistent courtier loved her was one of the indisputable facts of life to her. She knew it just as surely as she knew that she was alive. She knew it, and the knowledge hurt her, for she could fancy nothing less hopeful than Thistle-wood's wooing, and she was without a spark of mere vanity.

'I think it is because you say so much that I don't feel quite able to believe it all,' she said. 'You feel it when you talk about it, but it seems to me as if you _had_ to talk before you get to feel it.'

His brows bent down over gloomy eyes again, and he folded his arms as he looked at her. Once more poor Bertha thought of the stage lover she had seen, and a long-drawn sigh escaped her.

'I can't think it's all quite real,' she said, almost desperately.

'You think I say too much?' he retorted. 'It seems to me as if I said too little. It seems to me as if there weren't any words to speak such thoughts and feelings.'

'Is that because you don't value the words? 'she .' asked him. 'Don't you think that if you felt what the words do mean that they'd seem enough for you?'

'I know I'm a good-for-nothing beggar,' he answered, with a sudden air of weary self-loathing and disdain. 'I know. I've got a way of taking everything in deadly earnest for an hour or two. But,' with a sudden swerve into the track of self-justification, 'if that makes you think I'm fickle and weak-willed, you're all wrong, darling. There are some fellows--I know plenty--who go through life like a lot of oysters. They don't feel anything--they don't care about anything, or anybody. But, bless your heart, my dear, they never get doubted.'

Bertha took this for a satiric dig at the absent Thistlewood, and spoke up for him, needlessly, as it happened.

'Still waters run deep, Mr. Protheroe.'

'Some of 'em do,' responded Mr. Protheroe, with profoundest gloom, which lightened suddenly into a smile as bright as sunshine. 'But some of 'em don't run at all. And some of 'em are as shallow as any puddle you'll find along the road, only they're so bemuddled you can't see to the bottom of 'em. You can plumb 'em with your little finger, though, if you don't mind soiling it.'

Now this innocent generalisation seemed gratuitously offensive to the absent Thistlewood, and chilled Bertha greatly.

'That may be very true of some people,' she responded; 'but it isn't true of all the quiet people in the world.. And I don't think, Mr.

Protheroe, that the people who make the greatest parade of their feelings are the people who really have the most to speak of.'

'Why, that's true, too, of some people,' returned Protheroe; 'but there are all sorts in the world, dear. Some say a lot and feel a lot Some feel a lot and say nothing. Some say nothing and feel nothing. It may be a fault with me--I don't know--but when I start to say a thing I want to say all of it. But surely a feeling isn't less real because you don't seem able to express it whatever words you choose.'

'Where the feeling's sacred the words are sacred,' Bertha objected.

'Tell me what it is you fear about me,' he besought her, leaning across the table, and searching her face with his eyes. 'You don't believe I should have a wandering mind if you said yes, and we should once be married?'

She had laid the book upon the table, and now betook herself to fingering the leaves again.

'I've no right to pick faults in you, or give you lessons, Mr.