argue: was
this levity, or was it falsehood? Was she so little mindful of honesty that
she would show these signs of favour to one she held most cheaply, or was
it that her distaste to this man was mere pretence, and only assumed to
deceive others.

After all, Joe Atlee was a nobody; flattery might call him an adventurer,
but he was not even so much. Amongst the men of the dangerous party he
mixed with he was careful never to compromise himself. He might write the
songs of rebellion, but he was little likely to tamper with treason itself.
So much he would tell her when he got back. Not angrily, nor passionately,
for that would betray him and disclose his jealousy, but in the tone of a
man revealing something he regretted--confessing to the blemish of one
he would have liked better to speak well of. There was not, he thought,
anything unfair in this. He was but warning her against a man who was
unworthy of her. Unworthy of her! What words could express the disparity
between them? Not but if she liked him--and this he said with a certain
bitterness--or thought she liked him, the disproportion already ceased to
exist.

Hour after hour of that long summer day he walked, revolving such thoughts
as these; all his conclusions tending to the one point, that _he_ was not
the easy victim she thought him, and that, come what might, _he_ should not
be offered up as a sacrifice to her worship of Joe Atlee.

'There is nothing would gratify the fellow's vanity,' thought he, 'like a
successful rivalry of him! Tell him he was preferred to me, and he would be
ready to fall down and worship whoever had made the choice.'

By dwelling on all the possible and impossible issues of such an
attachment, he had at length convinced himself of its existence, and even
more, persuaded himself to fancy it was something to be regretted and
grieved over for worldly considerations, but not in any way regarded as
personally unpleasant.

As he came in sight of home and saw a light in the small tower where Kate's
bedroom lay, he determined he would go up to his sister and tell her so
much of his mind as he believed was finally settled, and in such a way as
would certainly lead her to repeat it to Nina.

'Kate shall tell her that if I have left her suddenly and gone back
to Trinity to keep my term, I have not fled the field in a moment of
faint-heartedness. I do not deny her beauty. I do not disparage one of her
attractions, and she has scores of them.