Isabel took his hand, and looked at him with grateful tears in her eyes.

“How good you are to me, Mr. Moody!” she said.  “I wish I could tell you how deeply I feel your kindness.”

“You can do it easily,” he answered, with a smile.  “Call me ’Robert’—­don’t call me ‘Mr. Moody.’”

She took his arm with a sudden familiarity that charmed him.  “If you had been my brother I should have called you ‘Robert,’” she said; “and no brother could have been more devoted to me than you are.”

He looked eagerly at her bright face turned up to his.  “May I never hope to be something nearer and dearer to you than a brother?” he asked timidly.

She hung her head and said nothing.  Moody’s memory recalled Sharon’s coarse reference to her “sweetheart.”  She had blushed when he put the question?  What had she done when Moody put his question?  Her face answered for her—­she had turned pale; she was looking more serious than usual.  Ignorant as he was of the ways of women, his instinct told him that this was a bad sign.  Surely her rising color would have confessed it, if time and gratitude together were teaching her to love him?  He sighed as the inevitable conclusion forced itself on his mind.

“I hope I have not offended you?” he said sadly.

“Oh, no.”

“I wish I had not spoken.  Pray don’t think that I am serving you with any selfish motive.”

“I don’t think that, Robert.  I never could think it of you.”

He was not quite satisfied yet.  “Even if you were to marry some other man,” he went on earnestly, “it would make no difference in what I am trying to do for you.  No matter what I might suffer, I should still go on—­for your sake.”

“Why do you talk so?” she burst out passionately.  “No other man has such a claim as you to my gratitude and regard.  How can you let such thoughts come to you?  I have done nothing in secret.  I have no friends who are not known to you.  Be satisfied with that, Robert—­and let us drop the subject.”

“Never to take it up again?” he asked, with the infatuated pertinacity of a man clinging to his last hope.

At other times and under other circumstances, Isabel might have answered him sharply.  She spoke with perfect gentleness now.

“Not for the present,” she said.  “I don’t know my own heart.  Give me time.”

His gratitude caught at those words, as the drowning man is said to catch at the proverbial straw.  He lifted her hand, and suddenly and fondly pressed his lips on it.  She showed no confusion.  Was she sorry for him, poor wretch!—­and was that all?

They walked on, arm-in-arm, in silence.

Crossing the last field, they entered again on the high road leading to the row of villas in which Miss Pink lived.  The minds of both were preoccupied.  Neither of them noticed a gentleman approaching on horseback, followed by a mounted groom.  He was advancing slowly, at the walking-pace of his horse, and he only observed the two foot-passengers when he was close to them.