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.
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