strange behavior.

The trees were beginning to assume gigantic shapes and to get mixed up
with the horizon, and his eyes were aching. He was suffering keenly.
Finally his eyes rested on the ground. A new trouble had arisen and
was torturing him: he thought it was his duty to congratulate her on
her engagement with his brother. If he wished her happiness without
waiting for her to tell him about the engagement, she perhaps would
see that he was not quite so impolite as she had thought him. It was
hard to commence. Distressfully his hand caressed the rough fence.

Katie glanced at him stealthily: the troubled look on his face smote
her to the heart. She was ashamed of her cruelty.

Trying to piece his barren English so it would not offend, Vital
finally told her how glad he was that she was going to be his
brother's wife. He dwelt upon Zotique's manliness, and how he was
quite sure she would never be sorry that she had chosen him.

She gazed at him in amazement. "Marry Zotique?" she queried, aghast.

He thought her surprise was due to his knowledge of the engagement, so
he hastened, with much delicacy, to explain that he had not meant to
listen. Zotique, of course, had been very much in earnest and had
spoken a little loudly to her as they passed the birch tree; that was
how he came to know so soon.

As Katie noted Vital's innate tact and delicacy, and saw how bravely
he was suffering, and knew that it was all due to her cruelty, her
lips began to tremble pitifully, and her eyes filled with tears. She