His voice trembled as he appealed to her in those simple words.  He had taken the right way at last to produce an impression on her.  She really felt for him.  All that was true and tender in her nature began to rise in her and take his part.  Unhappily, he felt too deeply and too strongly to be patient, and give her time.  He completely misinterpreted her silence—­completely mistook the motive that made her turn aside for a moment, to gather composure enough to speak to him.  “Ah!” he burst out bitterly, turning away on his side, “you have no heart.”

She instantly resented those unjust words.  At that moment they wounded her to the quick.

“You know best,” she said.  “I have no doubt you are right.  Remember one thing, however, that though I have no heart, I have never encouraged you, Mr. Moody.  I have declared over and over again that I could only be your friend.  Understand that for the future, if you please.  There are plenty of nice women who will be glad to marry you, I have no doubt.  You will always have my best wishes for your welfare.  Good-morning.  Her Ladyship will wonder what has become of me.  Be so kind as to let me pass.”

Tortured by the passion that consumed him, Moody obstinately kept his place between Isabel and the door.  The unworthy suspicion of her, which had been in his mind all through the interview, now forced its way outwards to expression at last.

“No woman ever used a man as you use me without some reason for it,” he said.  “You have kept your secret wonderfully well—­but sooner or later all secrets get found out.  I know what is in your mind as well as you know it yourself.  You are in love with some other man.”

Isabel’s face flushed deeply; the defensive pride of her sex was up in arms in an instant.  She cast one disdainful look at Moody, without troubling herself to express her contempt in words.  “Stand out of my way, sir!”—­that was all she said to him.

“You are in love with some other man,” he reiterated passionately.  “Deny it if you can!”

“Deny it?” she repeated, with flashing eyes.  “What right have you to ask the question?  Am I not free to do as I please?”

He stood looking at her, meditating his next words with a sudden and sinister change to self-restraint.  Suppressed rage was in his rigidly set eyes, suppressed rage was in his trembling hand as he raised it emphatically while he spoke his next words.

“I have one thing more to say,” he answered, “and then I have done.  If I am not your husband, no other man shall be.  Look well to it, Isabel Miller.  If there is another man between us, I can tell him this—­he shall find it no easy matter to rob me of you!”

She started, and turned pale—­but it was only for a moment.  The high spirit that was in her rose brightly in her eyes, and faced him without shrinking.