He turned a dusky red. The shaft had gone home, but he tried to hide the wound. “A dull bird, eh?” he said, affecting to misunderstand her. “Well, I thought you liked dull birds. I couldn’t be duller than Rodd, and you don’t find fault with him.” It was a return shot, aimed only to cover his retreat. But the shot told in a way that surprised him. Betty reddened to her hair, and her eyes snapped. “At any rate, Mr. Rodd is what he seems!” she cried. “Oh! oh!” “He’s not hollow!” “No! Of course not. A most witty, bright, amusing gentleman, the pink of fashion, and—what is it?—the mould of form! Hollow? Oh, no, Betty, very solid, I should say—and stolid!” with a grin. “Not a roaring blade, perhaps—I could hardly call him that, but a sound, substantial, wooden—gentleman! I am sure that your father values him highly as a clerk, and would value him still more highly as——” “What?” “I need not put it into words—but it lies with you to qualify him for the post. Rodd? Well, well, times are changed, Betty! But we live and learn.” “You have a good deal to learn,” she cried, bristling with anger, “about women!” He got away then, retiring in good order and pleased that he had not had the worst of it; hoping, too, that he had closed the little spitfire’s mouth. But there he found himself mistaken. The young lady was of a high courage, and perhaps had been a little spoiled. Where she once felt contempt she made no bones about showing it, and whenever they met, her frankness, sharpened by a woman’s intuition, kept him on tenter-hooks. “You seem to think very ill of me,” he said once. “And yet you trouble yourself a good deal about me.” “You make a mistake!” she replied. “I am not troubling myself about you. I’m thinking of my father.” “Ah! Now you are out of my reach. That’s beyond me.” “I wish he were!” “He knows his own business.” “I hope he does!” she riposted. And though it was the memory of Rodd’s warning that supplied the dart, the animosity that sped it had another source. The truth was that her brother had at last taken her into his confidence. It was not without great unhappiness that he had seen all the hopes which he had built upon the Squire’s gratitude come to nothing. He had hoped, and for a time had been even confident; but nothing had happened, no message, no summons had reached him. The events of that night might have been a dream, as far as he was concerned. Yet he could not see his way to blow his own trumpet, or proclaim what he had done. He stood no better than before, and indeed his position was worse. For as long as the Squire lay bedridden and ill he could not go to him. Even when the report came that he was mending, Clement hesitated. To go to him, basing his claim on what had happened, to go to him and tell the story, as he must, with his own lips—this presented difficulties from which a man with delicate feelings might well shrink!