"WELL?" asked Isabel eagerly, "what does Mr. Hardyman say? Does he think he can cure Tommie?"Moody answered a little coldly and stiffly. His dark, deeply-set eyes rested on Isabel with an uneasy look.
"Mr. Hardyman seems to understand animals," he said. "He lifted the dog's eyelid and looked at his eyes, and then he told us the bath was useless.""Go on!" said Isabel impatiently. "He did something, I suppose, besides telling you that the bath was useless?""He took a knife out of his pocket, with a lancet in it."Isabel clasped her hands with a faint cry of horror. "Oh, Mr. Moody! did he hurt Tommie?""Hurt him?" Moody repeated, indignant at the interest which she felt in the animal, and the indifference which she exhibited towards the man (as represented by himself). "Hurt him, indeed! Mr. Hardyman bled the brute--"
"Brute?" Isabel reiterated, with flashing eyes. "I know some people, Mr. Moody, who really deserve to be called by that horrid word. If you can't say 'Tommie,' when you speak of him in my presence, be so good as to say 'the dog.' "Moody yielded with the worst possible grace. "Oh, very well! Mr. Hardyman bled the dog, and brought him to his senses directly. I am charged to tell you--" He stopped, as if the message which he was instructed to deliver was in the last degree distasteful to him.
"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 ***; 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. Hardyman to speak favorably of me," she said, with a pert little laugh. "I hope you are not jealous of him, Mr. Moody?"Moody was in no humor to make allowances for the unbridled gayety of youth and good spirits.
"I hate any man who admires you," he burst out passionately, "let him be who he may!"Isabel looked at her strange lover with unaffected astonishment. How unlike Mr. Hardyman, who had treated her as a lady from first to last! "What an odd man you are!" she said. "You can't take a joke. I'm sure I didn't mean to offend you.""You don't offend me--you do worse, you distress me."Isabel's color began to rise. The merriment died out of her face; she looked at Moody gravely. "I don't like to be accused of distressing people when I don't deserve it," she said. "I had better leave you. Let me by, ifyou please."
Having committed one error in offending her, Moody committed another in attempting to make his peace with her. Acting under the fear that she would really leave him, he took her roughly by the arm.
"You are always trying to get away from me," he said. "I wish I knew how to make you like me, Isabel.""I don't allow you to call me Isabel!" she retorted, struggling to free herself from his hold. "Let go of my arm. You hurt me."Moody dropped her arm with a bitter sigh. "I don't know how to deal with you," he said simply. "Have some pity on me!"If the steward had known anything of women (at Isabel's age) he would never have appealed to her mercy in those plain terms, and at the unpropitious moment. "Pity you?" she repeated contemptuously. "Is that all you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!" She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into the pockets of her apron. That was how she pitied him! His face turned paler and paler-- he writhed under it.
"For God"s sake, don't turn everything I say to you into ridicule!" he cried. "You know I love you with all my heart and soul. Again and again I have asked you to be my wife--and you laugh at me as if it was a joke. I haven't deserved to be treated in that cruel way. It maddens me--I can't endure it!"Isabel looked down on the floor, and followed the lines in the pattern of the carpet with the end of her smart little shoe. She could hardly have been further away from really understanding Moody if he had spoken in Hebrew. She was partly startled, partly puzzled, by the strong emotions which she had unconsciously called into being. "Oh dear me!" she said, "why can't you talk of something else? Why can't we be friends? Excuse me for mentioning it," she went on, looking up at him with a saucy smile, "you are old enough to be my father."Moody's head sank on his breast. "I own it," he answered humbly. "But there is something to be said for me. Men as old as I am have made good husbands before now. I would devote my whole life to make you happy.