"You do?—you do? You think I might have another try?"
"Well, are you to be trusted to keep yourself in check? You know of old that when you lose your temper you have no chance at all with Millie, because she never loses hers."
Hubert grinned. "She did the other night, though."
"Do you think she said things that she will be ashamed of when she thinks them over?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then I think that should give you a hold of a new kind over her. If you can only manage to put her in the wrong, old man, and be magnanimous and forgive her—see?"
Bert's admiration was open and glowing.
"You have a genius! You ought to marry, Bishop—you ought really."
"My advice is," finally said the mentor, "that you go at once to Fransdale, and see how the land lies. See what frame of mind Millie is in. If she is scornful and gay, and wrapped up in Lance and her marriage, your course will be more difficult. If she shows you, by word or look, that she thinks she behaved ill, or wounded you, or desires your good opinion, then to my thinking you have a chance that you ought to take. You have now been disciplined by failure; you should have learnt something; and Melicent also must be wiser. For if she has any feeling at all—which, as you know, I always took leave to doubt—she must have suffered keenly during these last few months."
It was with the ring of this advice in his ears that Bert had hurled himself and his motor through England, and arrived at Fransdale, where in his rage he had vowed never to set foot more.