If a man had suspected Tom of such a feeling, I fear he would have cared little, save how to restore the balance by making a fool of the man who fancied him a fool: but no male self-sufficiency or pride is proof against the contempt of woman; and Tom slunk along by the schoolmistress's side, as if he had been one of her naughtiest school-children. He tried, of course, to brazen it out to his own conscience. He had done no harm, after all; indeed, never seriously meant any. She was making a ridiculous fuss about nothing. It was all part and parcel of her methodistical cant. He dared say that she was not as prudish with the methodist parson. And at that base thought he paused; for a flush of rage, and a strong desire on such hypothesis to slay the said methodist parson, or any one else who dared even to look sweet on Grace, showed him plainly enough what he had long been afraid of, that he was really in love with her; and that, as he put it, if she did not make a fool of herself about him, he was but too likely to end in making a fool of himself about her. However, he must speak, to support his own character as a man of the world;--it would never do to knock under to a country girl in this way;--she might go and boast of it all over the town;--beside, foiled or not, he would not give in without trying her mettle somewhat further. "Miss Harvey, will you forgive me?" "I have forgiven you." "Will you forget?" "If I can!" she said, with a marked expression, which signified (though, of course, she did not mean Tom to understand it), "some of what is past is too precious, and some too painful, to forget." "I do not ask you to forget all which has passed!" "I am afraid that there is nothing which would be any credit to you, sir, to have remembered." "Credit or none," said Tom, unabashed, "do not forget one word that I said." She looked hastily and sidelong round,--"That I am in your power?" "No! curse it! I wish I had bitten out my tongue before I had said that. No! that I am in your power, Miss Harvey." "Sir! I never heard you say that; and if you had, the sooner anything so untrue is forgotten the better." "I said that I loved you, Grace; and if that does not mean that--" "Sir! Mr. Thurnall! I cannot, I will not hear! You only insult me, sir, by speaking thus, when you know that--that you consider me--a thief!" and the poor girl burst into tears again. "I do not! I do not;" cried Tom, growing really earnest at the sight of her sorrow, "Did I not begin this unhappy talk by begging your pardon for ever having let such a thought cross my mind?" "But you do! you do! you told me as much at my own door; and I have seen it ever since, till I have almost gone mad under it!"