Miss Catherine’s words had scarcely died out of Isabel’s ear when the minister himself stood at the door.
She was standing where her kinswoman had left her—standing in front of the window, where the light fell full upon her face and figure, her hands held softly together, her eyes full of uncertainty and anxious thought. When Mr. Lothian came in she raised them to him with a dumb entreaty, which went to his heart. He had come to have an answer to his love-suit; and she who had to decide it stood gazing at him, praying him meekly to tell her what to do and what to say!
He came forward at that appeal, and took her hands into his.
‘Isabel,’ he said, with a voice full of emotion, ‘must I leave it over till another time, and come back when you have made up your mind? My darling, you are not to make yourself unhappy for me.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ she said, half-sobbing; ‘I cannot tell what to do. Tell me what to do. It is you that know best.’
And once more she raised her eyes to her lover—humble, beseeching, asking his counsel. Surely never man was in so strange a dilemma before. He made a little pause to master himself; he made an effort to throw off from him his natural interest in his own suit. He looked at her, into her beseeching eyes, to see her heart through them, if that might be. His voice sunk to the lowest passionate tones.
‘Isabel,’ he said, clasping her hand so closely that he hurt her, ‘do you love him still?’
Then there came a cry as of a dumb creature, and big tears rolled up into her eyes.
‘No!’ she said, gazing at him with those two liquid globes—dark, unfathomable seas, in which all his skill and wisdom failed. It seemed to him as if she had, by some craft of nature, veiled the eyes which he might have divined, with the unshed tears which he could not divine.
‘You only can tell,’ he cried, losing such semblance as he had of calm—‘you only can tell! Isabel, do you love him still?’