His response came with meditative slowness and with playful eyes:  “Whenever I am justified in having such anxieties, they shall go unconfessed.”

“That relieves my fears,” laughed Isabel, and caught a quick hint of trouble on Arthur’s brow, though he too managed to laugh.  Whereupon, half sighing, half singing, she twined an arm in one of Ruth’s, swung round her, waved to the General as he took a seat on the elm-tree bench, and so, passing to Arthur, changed partners.

“Let us go in,” whispered Leonard to his sister, with a sudden pained look, and instantly resumed his genial air.

But the uneasy Arthur saw his moving lips and both changes of countenance.  He saw also the look which Ruth threw toward Mrs. Morris, where that lady and Godfrey moved slowly in conversation,—­he ever so sedate, she ever so sprightly.  And he saw Isabel glance as anxiously in the same direction.  But then her eyes came to his, and under her voice, though with a brow all sunshine, she said, “Don’t look so perplexed.”

“Perplexed!” he gasped.  “Isabel, you’re giving me anguish!”

She gleamed an injured amazement, but promptly threw it off, and when she turned to see if Leonard or Ruth had observed it they were moving to meet Godfrey.  Mrs. Morris was joining the General under the elm.

“How have I given you pain, dear heart?” asked Isabel, as she and Arthur took two or three slow steps apart from the rest, so turning her face that they should see its tender kindness.

“Ah! don’t ask me, my beloved!” he warily exclaimed.  “It is all gone!  Oh, the heavenly wonder to hear you, Isabel Morris, you—­give me loving names!  You might have answered me so differently; but your voice, your eyes, work miracles of healing, and I am whole again.”

Isabel gave again the laugh whose blithe, final sigh was always its most winning note.  Then, with tremendous gravity, she said, “You are very indiscreet, dear, to let me know my power.”

His face clouded an instant, as if the thought startled him with its truth and value.  But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of brow, “That’s no way to tame a shrew, my love,” he laughed aloud, and peace came again with Isabel’s smile.

Then—­because a woman must always insist on seeing the wrong side of the goods—­she murmured, “Tell me, Arthur, what disturbed you.”

“Words, Isabel, mere words of yours, which I see now were meant in purest play.  You told Leonard”—­

“Leonard!  What did I tell Leonard, dear?”

“You told him not to confess certain anxieties, even if they were justified.”

“Oh, Arthur!”

“I see my folly, dearest.  But Isabel, he ought not to have answered that the more they were justified, the more they should go unconfessed!”

“Oh, Arthur! the merest, idlest prattle!  What meaning could you”—­

“None, Isabel, none!  Only, my good angel, I so ill deserve you that with every breath I draw I have a desperate fright of losing you, and a hideous resentment against whoever could so much as think to rob me of you.”