neither
more nor less.

An equally delicate instinct forbade Gertrude to express all the joy
which this assurance gave her. Excessive joy would have implied undue
surprise; and it was a part of her plan frankly to expect the best
things of her companion. "If you have been busy," she said, "I
congratulate you. What have you been doing?"

"O, a hundred things. I have been quarrying, and draining, and clearing,
and I don't know what all. I thought the best thing was just to put my
own hands to it. I am going to make a stone fence along the great lot on
the hill there. Wallace is forever grumbling about his boundaries. I'll
fix them once for all. What are you laughing at?"

"I am laughing at certain foolish apprehensions that I have been
indulging for a week past. You're wiser than I, Richard. I have no
imagination."

"Do you mean that _I_ have? I haven't enough to guess what you _do_
mean."

"Why, do you suppose, have I come over this morning?"

"Because you thought I was sulking on account of your having called me a
fool."

"Sulking, or worse. What do I deserve for the wrong I have done you?"

"You have done me no wrong. You reasoned fairly enough. You are not
obliged to know me better than I know myself. It's just like you to be
ready to take back that bad word, and try to make yourself believe that
it was unjust. But it was perfectly just, and therefore I have managed
to bear it. I _was_ a fool at that moment,--a stupid, impudent fool. I
don't know whether that man had been making love to you or not. But you
had, I think, been feeling love for him,--you looked it; I should have
been less than a man, I should be unworthy of your--your affection, if I
had failed to see it. I did see it,--I saw it as clearly as I see those
oxen now; and yet I bounced in with my own ill-timed claims. To do so
was to be a fool. To have been other than a fool would have been to have
waited, to have backed out, to have bitten my tongue off before I spoke,
to have done anything but what I did. I have no right to claim you,
Gertrude, until I can woo you better than that. It was the most
fortunate thing in the world that you spoke as you did: it was even
kind. It saved me all the misery of groping about for a starting-point.
Not to have spoken as you did would have been to fail of justice; and
then, probably, I should have sulked, or, as you very considerately say,
done worse. I had made a false move in the game, and the only thing to