‘I think it so often, that I’m afraid I’m bound to say it sometimes; but, if it offends, I hope you’ll forgive me. You know you are my darling, don’t you? You know there isn’t a queen in the world I’d even with you if every hair of her head was hung with Koh-i-noors. “Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” the Wise Man says. So, if I do let slip “my dear” or “my darling” now and then, you’ll know it’s accident, and you won’t take offence at it—will you?’
This was agile but unsatisfactory.
‘Please understand me, Mr. Protheroe,’ said Bertha, with rural dignity; ‘you must not come here again until you can come merely as a friend.’
‘Bertha! You can’t mean it! What have I done? What has changed you?’
‘Mr Protheroe!’—the rural dignity made an insulted goddess of her to Lane’s fancy—‘what right have you to say that I have changed?’
‘Why, Bertha,’ he said, meekly and strickenly, ‘wasn’t I to come in six months’ time and get an answer?’
‘Will you oblige me by coming for your answer in six months’ time,’ answered Bertha. ‘Good-afternoon, Mr. Protheroe.’
Bertha thought herself more cruel to herself than to him. She knew how infinitely more cruel she was to Thistlewood, but that was not a thing to be avoided. She and he alike must suffer—she in giving pain and he in bearing it. Bertha’s heart ached over Lane, and the bitterness of it was to know that in a week or two the butterfly nature would have ceased to care. He was hotly in love to-day, no doubt, but he would be out of love to-morrow, may be, and in a month or two hotly in love again elsewhere.
On the Sunday following these interviews dogged John was at church, and the butterfly Protheroe also. Thistlewood looked as he always looked, rudely healthy, and a masterpiece of masterfulness and sullen perseverance and resolve. Lane was pallid and miserable, and Bertha remarking him was compelled to fall back on the bitter consolation of her former thoughts. He would take it heavily for a day or two, and would then forget all about it. He cast a glance or two in Bertha’s direction, and his eyes were full of melancholy appeal. But for her certainty he would have moved her, for she was predisposed to be moved, and she had hardly expected to have had so much effect upon him. He walked dejectedly out of church at the close of the service, and Thistlewood half by accident shouldered him. He took it meekly, and made no sign.
Two or three days later came a piece of news of the sort Bertha had expected. Mr. Protheroe was heard of as having made one of a picnic party in the neighbourhood of Heydon Hey, and of this party he was said to have been the life and soul. He was reported to have paid marked attentions to Miss Badger, daughter of a wealthy cheesemonger in Castle Barfield High Street. The young lady was rumoured to be possessed of great personal attractions, and a pretty penny, present and prospective.