But there was news at the end of the letter that caused consternation in one or two hearts, and sent Hubert across, storming and almost crying, to Isabel, who was taking a turn in the dusk at sunset. She heard his step beyond the hedge, quick and impatient, and stopped short, hesitating and wondering.
He had behaved to her with extraordinary tact and consideration, and she was very conscious of it. Since her sudden return ten days before from the visit which had been meant to separate them, he had not spoken a word to her privately, except a shy sentence or two of condolence, stammered out with downcast eyes, but which from the simplicity and shortness of the words had brought up a sob from her heart. She guessed that he knew why she had been sent to Northampton, and had determined not to take advantage in any way of her sorrow. Every morning he had disappeared before she came down, and did not come back till supper, where he sat silent and apart, and yet, when an occasion offered itself, behaved with a quick attentive deference that showed her where his thoughts had been.
Now she stood, wondering and timid, at that hurried insistent step on the other side of the hedge. As she hesitated, he came quickly through the doorway and stopped short.
“Mistress Isabel,” he said, with all his reserve gone, and looking at her imploringly, but with the old familiar air that she loved, “have you heard? I am to go as soon as my father comes back. Oh! it is a shame!”
His voice was full of tears, and his eyes were bright and angry. Her heart leapt up once and then seemed to cease beating.
“Go?” she said; and even as she spoke knew from her own dismay how dear that quiet chivalrous presence was to her.
“Yes,” he went on in the same voice. “Oh! I know I should not speak; and—and especially now at all times; but I could not bear it; nor that you should think it was my will to go.”
She stood still looking at him.
“May I walk with you a little,” he said, “but—I must not say much—I promised my father.”
And then as they walked he began to pour it out.