"I am afraid you are getting a little tired," said Hardyman. "Won't you take my arm?"Isabel was on her guard: she had not forgotten what Lady Lydiard had said to her. "No, thank you, Mr. Hardyman; I am a better walker than you think."Hardyman continued the conversation in his blunt, resolute way. "I wonder whether you will believe me," he asked, "if I tell you that this is one of the happiest days of my life.""I should think you were always happy," Isabel cautiously replied, "having such a pretty place to live in as this."Hardyman met that answer with one of his quietly-positive denials. "A man is never happy by himself," he said. "He is happy with a companion. For instance, I am happy with you."Isabel stopped and looked back. Hardyman's language was becoming a little too explicit. "Surely we have lost Mrs. Drumblade and my aunt," she said. "I don't see them anywhere."You will see them directly; they are only a long way behind." With this assurance, he returned, in his own obstinate way, to his one object in view. "Miss Isabel, I want to ask you a question. I'm not a ladies' man. I speak my mind plainly to everybody--women included. Do you like being here to-day?"Isabel's gravity was not proof against this very downright question. "I should be hard to please," she said laughing, "if I didn't enjoy my visit to the farm."Hardyman pushed steadily forw ard through the obstacle of the farm to the question of the farm's master. "You like being here," he repeated. "Do you like Me?"This was serious. Isabel drew back a little, and looked at him. He waited with the most impenetrable gravity for her reply.
"I think you can hardly expect me to answer that question," she said "Why not?""Our acquaintance has been a very short one, Mr. Hardyman. And, if_you_ are so good as to forget the difference between us, I think _I_ ought to remember it.""What difference?"
"The difference in rank."
Hardyman suddenly stood still, and emphasized his next words by digging his stick into the grass.
"If anything I have said has vexed you," he began, "tell me so plainly, Miss Isabel, and I'll ask your pardon. But don't throw my rank in my face. I cut adrift from all that nonsense when I took this farm and got my living out of the horses. What has a man's rank to do with a man's feelings?" he went on, with another emphatic dig of his stick. "I am quite serious in asking if you like me--for this good reason, that I like you. Yes, I do. You remember that day when I bled the old lady's dog--well, I have found out since then that there's a sort of incompleteness in my life which I never suspected before. It's you who have put that idea into my head. You didn't mean it, I dare say, but you have done it all the same. I sat alone here yesterday evening smoking my pipe--and I didn't enjoy it. I breakfasted alone this morning--and I didn't enjoy _that_. I said to myself, She's coming to lunch, that's one comfort--I shall enjoy lunch. That's what I feel, roughly described. I don't suppose I've been five minutes together without thinking of you, now in one way and now in another, since the day when I first saw you. When a man comes to my time of life, and has had any experience, he knows what that means. It means, in plain English, that his heart is set on a woman. You're the woman."Isabel had thus far made several attempts to interrupt him, without success. But, when Hardyman's confession attained its culminating point, she insisted on being heard.
"If you will excuse me, sir," she interposed gravely, "I think I had better go back to the cottage. My aunt is a stranger here, and she doesn't know where to look for us.""We don't want your aunt," Hardyman remarked, in his most positive manner.
"We do want her," Isabel rejoined. "I won't venture to say it's wrong in you, Mr. Hardyman, to talk to me as you have just done, but I am quite sure it's very wrong of me to listen."He looked at her with such unaffected surprise and distress that she stopped, on the point of leaving him, and tried to make herself better understood.
"I had no intention of offending you, sir," she said, a little confusedly. "I only wanted to remind you that there are some things which a gentleman in your position--" She stopped, tried to finish the sentence, failed, and began another. "If I had been a young lady in your own rank of life," she went on, "I might have thanked you for paying me a compliment, and have given you a serious answer. As it is, I am afraid that I must say that you have surprised and disappointed me. I can claim very little for myself, I know. But I did imagine--so long as there was nothing unbecoming in my conduct--that I had some right to your respect."Listening more and more impatiently, Hardyman took her by the hand, and burst out with another of his abrupt questions.
"What can you possibly be thinking of?" he asked.
She gave him no answer; she only looked at him reproachfully, and tried to release herself.
Hardyman held her hand faster than ever.
"I believe you think me an infernal scoundrel!" he said. "I can stand a good deal, Miss Isabel, but I can't stand _that_. How have I failed in respect toward you, if you please? I have told you you're the woman my heart is set on. Well? Isn't it plain what I want of you, when I say that? Isabel Miller, I want you to be my wife!"Isabel's only reply to this extraordinary proposal of marriage was a faint cry of astonishment, followed by a sudden trembling that shook her from head to foot.
Hardyman put his arm round her with a gentleness which his oldest friend would have been surprised to see in him.