'Oh, Lane!' cried the girl, clasping her hands, and turning white with pity.

'Did I frighten you, my dear?' said Lane. 'It's nothing. It'll all be right in a day or two.'

'I hope so,' she answered, recovering herself, and seizing on principle before it made away for ever. 'I wish you to know that I think you have behaved very disgracefully, and I hope you will never speak to me again.'

'Why,' said Lane, 'that's hard measure, Bertha; and as for behaving disgracefully--if a man threatens to punch your head you must give him the chance to punch it. That's man's law, anyhow, whether it's woman's or not.'

'I am sure Mr. Thistlewood is no quarreller,' said Bertha, with great dignity 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 gra.s.ses 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 him. All this meant victory for his dearest hopes, and so he leapt to his feet, and marched off whistling like the throstle.

III

Bertha pursued her way along the tortuous bridlepath with thoughts which resembled the way she travelled. Like the road, her fancy seemed to turn back upon itself pretty often and yet in the main it held in the same direction. Of course, fighting was a brutal business to a girl's way of thinking, but then, when she came really to think of it; men were strange creatures altogether, half terribly glorious and half contemptible. Lane had endured all these injuries simply and merely because he loved her! She could have no conception of the possibilities of masculine joy in a fight for its own sake, or of the masculine sense of honour which compelled the meeting of a challenge half-way. Of course it was mightily unpleasant to be talked about, as the heroine of such a business. The village tongues had been busy, and would never altogether stop wagging for the remainder of her lifetime.

The influence of long years of respect for Thistle-wood seemed to turn her mental steps backward now and then. That so quiet and retired a man, and so little given to proclaiming himself should have made the most sacred wishes of his heart a matter of common gossip was understandable only on one hypothesis. His love and his despair carried him out of himself. That, of course, was a daring thing for any girl to think, but then Bertha was bound to find reasons.

Mainly, her mind was occupied in the reconstruction of her previous belief about Lane Protheroe. He also, it would seem, had manly qualities in him--could stand up to be beaten in the cause of the woman he loved.

The blows hurt her so, in the mere fancy of them, that she more than once put up her hands to her face to guard it. By the time she had accomplished her errand, and was on the way back to her father's farmhouse, she was all tenderness and forgiveness and admiration for the newly-revealed Lane, but then, as the fates would have it, just as she began to think of her cruelty to him, and of the terribly low spirits into which she must have thrown him, the familiar jocund whistle broke upon her ears, and when she stood still in a dreary amaze at this, she could hear the steps of the lover, who ought to have been altogether love-lorn, marching along in something very like a dance in time to his own music. What was one to think of such a man? She was back in a moment to her old opinion of him. No rooted feeling in him--no solidity--nothing to be sure of!

She made haste home, and there shut herself in her own room and cried.

Her mother walked upstairs, and finding the girl thus mournfully engaged, sat down tranquilly beside her and produced her knitting.

The click of the needles had an effect of commonplace which helped to restore Bertha to her self-possession, and in a little time her tears ceased, and moving to the window she stood there looking out upon the landscape. The monotonous click of the needles ceased, and she knew that her mother had laid down her work in her lap and was regarding her. She turned, with a ghost of a smile.

'You're thinkin', no doubt, as you're full o' trouble, my wench,' began the mother, 'and it's no manner o' use in talkin' to young folks to try an' mek out as a thing as pains don't hurt. But if you can only bring 'em t' understand as it won't hurt much by and by, you've done summat for 'em, may be. What's the trouble, wench? Come an' tell thy mother.'

'It's all over now, mother,' said Bertha

'Not it,' returned Mrs. Fellowes, 'nor won't be yet a while. Beesn't one as cries for nothing, like most gells. I was niver o' that kind myself.'

Bertha would not, perhaps could not, make a confidante even of her mother in this matter, but Mrs. Fellowes had a remarkable faculty for striking human averages, and she got near the truth in her guesses.

'There's one thing fixed and sure, my dear,' she said, 'and that is as follows: ayther you must find a mind to wed one of 'em, or you must pluck up a spirit and tell 'em you'll wed nayther.'

'I have told Mr. Thistlewood that I can never marry him,' said Bertha.

'And what about Lane?' her mother asked her.

'I can never marry him either,' the girl answered steadily. She had her voice under perfect control, but her averted face and the very lines of her figure enlightened the shrewd old mother.

'Hast told him so?' she asked.

'I have told him,' Bertha answered, 'never to speak to me again.'

'Hoity, toity, deary me!' cried the old woman. 'And what says he to that?'

'He didn't greatly seem to care,' said Bertha, with a beautifully a.s.sumed air of indifference.

'Maybe he didn't set such store by what you told him as to tek it in earnest?'

'Oh,' said the girl, languidly and indifferently, 'he knew I meant it.'

'And didn't seem to care? My dear, you're talkin' of Lane Protheroe!'

'He cared for a minute, perhaps,' Bertha said, her a.s.sumed indifference and languor tinctured with bitterness by this time. 'He cared for a minute, perhaps; just as he does about everything. I heard him whistling an hour afterwards.'

The disguise was excellent, and might have deceived a woman who had known her less intimately and watched her less closely, but it was transparent to the mother.

'That's the trouble, is it?' said Mrs. Fellowes, gravely betaking herself once more to her knitting. Bertha had been crying already, and had hard work to restrain herself. 'Look here, my darlin',' the mother said, with unwonted tenderness of tone and manner, 'if you can't read your own mind, you must let a old experienced woman read it for you. The lad's as the Lord made him. What we see in any o' the men to mek a fuss about, the Lord in His mercy only knows; but, to my mind, Lane's 'the pick o' ten thousand. He's alive, and that's more than _can_ be said of many on 'em. He's a clever lad, he's well to look at, and he's well-to-do.'

'Mother,' cried the girl, almost pa.s.sionately, her own pain wrung her so, 'he has no heart. He cares for a thing one minute, and doesn't care for it the next. He pretends--no, he doesn't pretend--but he thinks he cares, and while he thinks it I suppose he does care. But out of sight is out of mind with him.'

'Makest most o' thine own troubles, like the rest on us,' said Mrs.

Fellowes philosophically. But, in a moment, philosophy made way for motherly kindness, and, rising from her seat, she bestowed her knitting in a roomy pocket and put her arms about her daughter's waist. 'Art fond of the lad all the same,' she said. 'Ah, my dear, there's nothin' likely to be sorer than the natur as picks flies in the things it's fond on.

There's a deal o' laughin' at them as thinks all their geese is swans, but they're better off in the long run than them as teks all their swans to be geese.'

Bertha said nothing, but she trembled a little under the caress, and her mother, observing this, released her, went back to her chair, and once more drew forth her knitting.

'I reckon,' she said, after a pause, 'as John Thistlewood's had the spoiling of thee. Thee'st got to think so much o' them bulldog ways of his'n, that nothin' less 'll be of use to any man as comes a-courtin'.'

'Don't talk about it any more, mother,' said Bertha, with an air of weary want of interest. 'I have said good-bye to both of them.'

And there the interview ended.

IV

It became evident that Bertha was likely to have a troublesome time before her. First of all came John Thistlewood, dogged and resolute as ever, propping himself against the chimney-piece, flogging his gaitered legs with the switch he carried, and demanding Ay or No before his time.

Bertha determined to treat him with some spirit.