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, if you 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.  There isn’t a wish you could form which I wouldn’t be proud to obey.  You must not reckon me by years.  My youth has not been wasted in a profligate life; I can be truer to you and fonder of you than many a younger man.  Surely my heart is not quite unworthy of you, when it is all yours.  I have lived such a lonely, miserable life—­and you might so easily brighten it.  You are kind to everybody else, Isabel.  Tell me, dear, why are you so hard on me?”