"Well, what were you charged to tell me?"
"I was to say that Mr. Hardyman will give you instructions how to treat
the dog for the future."
Isabel hastened to the door, eager to receive her instructions. Moody
stopped her before she could open it.
"You are in a great hurry to get to Mr. Hardyman," he remarked.
Isabel looked back at him in surprise. "You said just now that Mr.
Hardyman was waiting to tell me how to nurse Tommie."
"Let him wait," Moody rejoined sternly. "When I left him, he was
sufficiently occupied in expressing his favorable opinion of you to her
Ladyship."
The steward's pale face turned paler still as he said those words.
With the arrival of Isabel in Lady Lydiard's house "his time had
come"--exactly as the women in the servants' hall had predicted. At last
the impenetrable man felt the influence of the sex; at last he knew the
passion of love misplaced, ill-starred, hopeless love, for a woman who
was young enough to be his child. He had already spoken to Isabel
more than once in terms which told his secret plainly enough. But the
smouldering fire of jealousy in the man, fanned into flame by Hardyman,
now showed itself for the first time. His looks, even more than his
words, would have warned a woman with any knowledge of the natures of
men to be careful how she answered him. Young, giddy, and inexperienced,
Isabel followed the flippant impulse of the moment, without a thought
of the consequences. "I'm sure it's very kind of Mr.
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