This pang of jealousy was very bitter; but still it served to stimulate him and rouse him from a depression that was gaining fast upon him. It is true, he remembered she had spoken slightingly of Joe Atlee. Called him noisy, pretentious, even vulgar; snubbed him openly on more than one occasion, and seemed to like to turn the laugh against him; but with all that she had sung duets with him, corrected some Italian verses he wrote, and actually made a little sketch in his note-book for him as a souvenir. A souvenir! and of what? Not of the ridicule she had turned upon him! not the jest she had made upon his boastfulness. Now which of these two did this argue: was this levity, or was it falsehood? Was she so little mindful of honesty that she would show these signs of favour to one she held most cheaply, or was it that her distaste to this man was mere pretence, and only assumed to deceive others. After all, Joe Atlee was a nobody; flattery might call him an adventurer, but he was not even so much. Amongst the men of the dangerous party he mixed with he was careful never to compromise himself. He might write the songs of rebellion, but he was little likely to tamper with treason itself. So much he would tell her when he got back. Not angrily, nor passionately, for that would betray him and disclose his jealousy, but in the tone of a man revealing something he regretted--confessing to the blemish of one he would have liked better to speak well of. There was not, he thought, anything unfair in this. He was but warning her against a man who was unworthy of her. Unworthy of her! What words could express the disparity between them? Not but if she liked him--and this he said with a certain bitterness--or thought she liked him, the disproportion already ceased to exist. Hour after hour of that long summer day he walked, revolving such thoughts as these; all his conclusions tending to the one point, that _he_ was not the easy victim she thought him, and that, come what might, _he_ should not be offered up as a sacrifice to her worship of Joe Atlee. ‘There is nothing would gratify the fellow’s vanity,’ thought he, ‘like a successful rivalry of him! Tell him he was preferred to me, and he would be ready to fall down and worship whoever had made the choice.’ By dwelling on all the possible and impossible issues of such an attachment, he had at length convinced himself of its existence, and even more, persuaded himself to fancy it was something to be regretted and grieved over for worldly considerations, but not in any way regarded as personally unpleasant. As he came in sight of home and saw a light in the small tower where Kate’s bedroom lay, he determined he would go up to his sister and tell her so much of his mind as he believed was finally settled, and in such a way as would certainly lead her to repeat it to Nina.