It is not a tender voice. It is not even a gentle or coldly friendly voice. It is, when all is told, a distinctly angry voice, full of possible reproaches and vehement upbraidings. Monica, raising her head with extreme nervousness, had just time to see Mr. Desmond in the huge fir-tree above her, before he drops at her feet. "What on earth were you doing up there?" asks she, thinking it wise to adopt the offensive style, so as to be first in the field, feeling instinctively that a scolding is coming and that she deserves it. "Watching _you_," returns he, sternly, nothing dismayed by her assumption of injured innocence, so her little ruse falls through. "A charming occupation, certainly!" says Miss Beresford, with fine disgust. "I climbed up into that tree," says Mr. Desmond, savagely, "and from it saw that you had spent your entire day with that idiot, Ryde." "Do you think," says Miss Beresford, with awful calm, "that it was a _gentlemanly_ thing to climb into that tree, like a horrid schoolboy, and spy upon a person?--_do you?_" "I don't," vehemently, "but I was driven to it. I don't care what is gentlemanly. I don't care," furiously, "what you think of me. I only know that my mind is now _satisfied_ about you, and that I know you are the most abominable flirt in the world, and that you ought to be ashamed of yourself." "Well, I'm not," with great self-possession. "The more to your discredit! That only means that you are bent on doing it again." "I shall certainly always talk to any man who talks to me. That is," cuttingly, "any man who knows how to conduct himself with propriety." "Meaning--_I_ don't, I suppose?" "_Certainly_ you don't." "Oh, if it comes to that," says Desmond, in tones of the deepest desperation, and as if nothing is left to expect but the deluge in another moment. And, in effect, it comes. Not, as one has been taught to expect, in sudden storm, and wind, and lightning, but first in soft light drops, and then in a perfect downpour, that bursts upon them with passionate fury. As they are standing beneath a magnificent beech, they get but a taste of the shower in reality, though Desmond, seeing some huge drops lying on Monica's thin white gown, feels his heart smite him. "Here, take this," he says, roughly, taking off his coat and placing it round her shoulders. "No, thank you," says Miss Beresford, stiffly. "You must," returns he, and, to his surprise, she makes no further resistance. Perhaps she is cowed by the authority of his manner; _perhaps_ she doesn't like the raindrops. Encouraged, however, by her submission to a further daring of fortune, he says, presently,-- "You might have given Cobbett a turn, I think, instead of devoting yourself all day to that egregious ass." "He prefers talking to Hermia. I suppose you don't want me to go up to people and ask them to be civil to me?" "Some other fellow, then." "You would be just as jealous of him, whoever he was."