‘Horace Stapylton. I gave my promise I would bring it—though against my will.’
Isabel gazed at him, for a moment growing pale. She held the letter helplessly in her hand. What could he mean? It had been left with him last night. He could perhaps give some explanation. What could he mean? Her pulse began to beat again as it had not done since her faint. She made Mr. Lothian a little sign with her hand to stay, for he had risen, and stood quite apart from her in the centre of the room. Then with a hasty hand she tore open the letter. When the minister gave a stolen glance at her, he could see that her cheeks were growing more and more flushed and feverish. The colour on them was no passing glow of delight and modesty, but the burning red of excitement and sudden passion. She went over it all rapidly, and then she uttered a low cry. Mr. Lothian glanced at her, but, seeing that the cry was unconscious, betook himself again to the window with what calmness was possible. Isabel had come to the postscript. He did not look round again for what seemed to him an age. What roused him at last was the rustle of the paper falling to the ground, and turning round hastily, he found Isabel with her face buried in her hands in a passion of tears. This was hard to bear. He went back to his seat beside the sofa, and picking up the letter laid it gently on her lap; and then he touched her shoulder softly with a fatherly, caressing hand, and said, ‘My poor child! my poor child!’ in a voice that came out of the very depths of his heart.
Then Isabel uncovered hastily her passionate, tear-stained face.
‘It is not that!’ she cried—‘it is not that! Oh, I think shame! Am I one to be spoken to so?—is it my doing? I think my heart will break! Take it and read it, and tell me if it is my doing, before I die of shame.’
He could only gaze at her, wondering if her mind were unhinged; but hasty Isabel, all ablaze with passion and misery, could not stop to think. She took up the letter—her lover’s letter, and thrust it into his rival’s hand.
‘If it is my doing—oh, never speak to me again!’ she cried. Shame and anger, and disappointment and anguish, were all tearing her asunder. And she had no Margaret to go to, to relieve her. Someone must give her that support and solace which her heart demanded, or she felt she must die. She hung upon his looks as he read it, reading his expression.
‘Could it be my fault?’ she cried. ‘Oh, Mr. Lothian, was I such a light lass? Was it anything I did that made him write like that to me?’
‘No, Isabel,’ he said, with a blaze of rage in his eyes, taking her feverish hand. ‘No, Isabel. My dear, think no more of it. It is that he understands neither yours nor you.’
And then instinctively, in an instant, hasty Isabel felt the mistake she had made, and felt that she could not bear any criticisms upon her lover even now. She took back her letter as suddenly as she had given it, and folded it up with trembling hands.
‘He does not understand,’ said Mr. Lothian, altogether unconscious of this rapid revolution. ‘You speak a language he cannot comprehend. The women he knows are a different species. Isabel, I have never said a word against him——’