Then, suddenly, an arm was put round her, and a voice sounded in her ear. She had known it must be so. A flood of satisfaction came into her heart. ‘I thought I was never to see him more!’ she said to herself without turning her face to him. But he had come at last, and her mind for the moment required no more.
‘It was a long time before I could make sure that this black figure in a bonnet was you,’ he said, as if they had parted an hour before; ‘I have been gazing and wondering for five minutes who it could be. I ought to have thought of the change of dress.’
Was this all he had to say to her after ‘what had happened?’ Isabel’s heart shrank, with a sense of sudden chill, within her breast.
‘I came out because my heart was sore,’ she faltered. ‘I cannot tell why; I thought I would like to see it again.’
‘Not to see me?’ said Stapylton, coming round where he could see her face.
‘If you had cared for that you might have come before,’ said Isabel, with a little movement of displeasure. How different it was from the conversation she had dreamed of!—the soft words, the tender pity, the assurances of his love.
‘Yes, among all those women that are constantly about you,’ he said, ‘your stepmother, and that old witch Miss Catherine—to see you coddled and kissed and mumbled over! No, Isabel; if I could have had you all to myself, as I have now——’
‘And you never thought. Maybe she wants me sitting there her lane? Oh, Horace! I would not have studied my own pleasure if you had been in trouble.’
‘Well, never mind,’ he said. ‘Of course I am not so good as you are; if I were to show myself so gentle, and patient, and unselfish, it would be taking your rôle. But we must not quarrel now we have met. You are pale, my darling. They have been shutting you up indoors and preaching you to death.’
‘Do you think there is nothing else to make me pale?’ said Isabel, moved once more by a pang of disappointment.