She parried the direct demand, not because there was any present uncertainty in her own mind, but because she discerned that in his eyes which warned her to deal gently with him.
“I say you wouldn’t want to marry a woman without a heart—a loving, home-making heart, I mean; and that is what you would do if you took me. I have my own little battle to fight, and I must fight it alone, Harry. That is simple justice to you, or to any other good man who might ask me to marry him.”
Antrim pounced upon the suggested alternative with unreasoning and vindictive acerbity.
“Any other man, you say. Who is the other man, Isabel?”
The steel of jealousy struck fire at once upon the flint of Isabel’s quick temper, and her mood changed in a twinkling.
“You intimated, the other day, that it might be Mr. Brant,” she retorted with malice aforethought.
Antrim set his teeth hard to keep back the bitter sayings that came uppermost, and when he could trust himself to speak again tried hard to make her deny his own assertion. “Just tell me there is no one else, Isabel, and I’ll be satisfied,” he pleaded; but Isabel, caring at that moment very little for Brant and a great deal for Antrim, yet stubbornly refused to give her lover even this small crumb of comfort.
“Then—once more, Isabel—give me my answer. Is it to be Yes, or No?”
“Oh, can’t you see? Can’t you understand that it must be No?”
“There is no reservation—no little green twig of hope that you can hold out to me?”