‘Indeed I never said so.’
‘No, of course you never did; but it comes to the same thing. And by the way, I bought some of Smeaton’s stock.’ he said; ‘I thought I might have to wait and kick my heels at your door, Isabel, longer than you made me do. You were kinder than I expected. I thought I might have had to wait, and that I had better be doing something. I had forgotten all about that.’
He thought he might have had to wait! The tone in which he said it was not unkind, but there was in it that note of incipient scorn which a woman’s ear is so fine to catch. She had yielded sooner than he expected. She had been an easy conquest after all his wrongs to her! The arrow went through and through Isabel’s heart. Sudden shame and humiliation so penetrated her that all power of speech was gone for the moment. No wonder her friends, the country-side, all who knew her, should disapprove and look on her coldly—when even he——
‘Was it a farm in our own parish you thought of?’ she cried, faltering, after a pause.
‘I thought of offering for Smeaton’s once,’ he said; ‘but that was on account of you. Now I have got you, it is a different matter; but hang it, Isabel, we can’t go on like this, you know. A man is bored to death here. Will you make up your mind, like a brave girl, to come with me directly and get it over, or shall we go back to Kilcranion, or somewhere, and wait till spring? By that time you ought to have made up your mind.’
‘Horace,’ she said, still speaking very low, ‘to every thing but one thing I can make up my mind at once, and that one thing I can never do—never! Don’t ask me. I cannot leave my baby behind.’
‘But, by Jove, if I insist upon it, you must!’ he cried, with a certain bravado in his tone.
She got up and went to him with a glow as of hidden fire in her eyes. ‘I will not!’ she said. ‘I will do anything—everything else you ask me, but not this!’
With her the crisis had reached the point of desperation. But as for Stapylton, he gazed at her for a moment, and, struck by her passion, turned round with a shrug of his shoulders, and what he meant to be an air of indifference. ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t make a fuss,’ he said. ‘I hate women who make a fuss—though I think you’ve always had rather a turn that way, Isabel. Well, never mind. It is better to wait for spring, anyhow. I’ll run over to Kilcranion to-morrow, and engage one of the sea-bathing houses till April. They should be cheap enough.’
‘But, Horace,’ said Isabel, with parched and trembling lips, ‘you must understand—not then nor now, can I leave her behind me. It is but one thing. I will do whatever you wish—whatever you tell me, except this.’