"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 forward 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.
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