Bertha stifled in her heart whatever tender sentiments Protheroe had inspired, and was prepared to pass him whenever she might meet him with such a manner as should indicate her new opinion of him beyond chance of mistake. Thistlewood had appeared on the Saturday, and on the Monday the fates threw her younger lover in her way. She discerned him from a distance, herself unseen. His figure dipped down into the hollow, and she could not see him again until they met at some turning or other of the tortuous lane. If pride had not forbidden it she could have turned to fly homewards, but she hardened her heart and went on until his footsteps sounded clearly on the stony road. Then he turned the corner, and she lifted one glance of superb disdain which melted suddenly under a terror-stricken pity. For this hero was worse battered than Number One had been, and one of those eyes, which had used to be so expressive and eloquent, was decorated by a shade. ‘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.