“They say everything that is brutal and cruel,” said Janet, with a sound of tears in her voice, “and therefore I was determined not to be mixed up in it: and I did my best to save you from what was--not a very fine action, Mr. Harwood. You did take him at a disadvantage. I don’t doubt that you were very angry, though you had no reason----” “If you think it was all for you!” cried Dolff, transported with boyish passion and anxious to give a blow in his turn. “But to think of that fellow, jeering and laughing at everybody, those who trusted in him----” “You see,” said Janet, with a smile, “that I was right when I said I was not at the bottom of it!” Dolff gave her a look which might have killed her where she stood, had the fire which passion struck even from his dull eyes been effectual, and yet which had in it a strange mixture of love and hate. He was not clever enough, however, to note that in Janet’s smile there was a mixture, too, of malicious triumph and of mortification; for, notwithstanding all that she had said, it would no doubt have been more agreeable to Janet’s pride to have been told that the sudden assault was entirely on her own account from fierce jealousy and passion. She was a little girl who was full of reason, and understood the complication of things, yet there was enough of the primitive in her to have been pleased, even had she not fully believed it, by such an asseveration as that. “In that case,” she said, “I don’t know what you have to find fault with me. I did my best to smooth it all away that nobody might have known anything. What use is there in telling things that are so easily misrepresented? If it would shock anyone who trusted in him to know that Mr. Meredith had walked home with the governess----” “Oh,” cried Dolff, “you will drive me out of my senses! who calls you the governess, Miss Summerhayes?” “I do myself,” said Janet, “it is my right title. I never have been one of those who despise it; but if it would vex anyone--who trusted in him--to hear that Mr. Meredith had walked home because it was dark and late with the----” “You are very anxious to defend Meredith,” said Dolff, bitterly. “Am I?” cried Janet. There was a dart out of her eyes at that moment that was more powerful than any dull spark that could come from Dolff’s. “If I am,” she added, with a laugh, “it is only for the sake of those who, as you say, trust in him, Mr. Harwood. For me I find those old-fashioned ways of his intolerable. He is like a man in an old novel,” cried Janet, “who kisses the maid and gives her half-a-crown, and is what is called civil to every girl. It is eighteenth-century--it is mock Lovelace--it is the most antiquated vanity and conceit. And he thinks that he takes people in by it, which shows how foolish and imbecile it is, besides being the worst taste in the world!”