Isabel had thus far made several attempts to interrupt him, without success.  But, when Hardyman’s confession attained its culminating point, she insisted on being heard.

“If you will excuse me, sir,” she interposed gravely, “I think I had better go back to the cottage.  My aunt is a stranger here, and she doesn’t know where to look for us.”

“We don’t want your aunt,” Hardyman remarked, in his most positive manner.

“We do want her,” Isabel rejoined.  “I won’t venture to say it’s wrong in you, Mr. Hardyman, to talk to me as you have just done, but I am quite sure it’s very wrong of me to listen.”

He looked at her with such unaffected surprise and distress that she stopped, on the point of leaving him, and tried to make herself better understood.

“I had no intention of offending you, sir,” she said, a little confusedly.  “I only wanted to remind you that there are some things which a gentleman in your position—­” She stopped, tried to finish the sentence, failed, and began another.  “If I had been a young lady in your own rank of life,” she went on, “I might have thanked you for paying me a compliment, and have given you a serious answer.  As it is, I am afraid that I must say that you have surprised and disappointed me.  I can claim very little for myself, I know.  But I did imagine—­so long as there was nothing unbecoming in my conduct—­that I had some right to your respect.”

Listening more and more impatiently, Hardyman took her by the hand, and burst out with another of his abrupt questions.

“What can you possibly be thinking of?” he asked.

She gave him no answer; she only looked at him reproachfully, and tried to release herself.

Hardyman held her hand faster than ever.

“I believe you think me an infernal scoundrel!” he said.  “I can stand a good deal, Miss Isabel, but I can’t stand that.  How have I failed in respect toward you, if you please?  I have told you you’re the woman my heart is set on.  Well?  Isn’t it plain what I want of you, when I say that?  Isabel Miller, I want you to be my wife!”

Isabel’s only reply to this extraordinary proposal of marriage was a faint cry of astonishment, followed by a sudden trembling that shook her from head to foot.

Hardyman put his arm round her with a gentleness which his oldest friend would have been surprised to see in him.

“Take your time to think of it,” he said, dropping back again into his usual quiet tone.  “If you had known me a little better you wouldn’t have mistaken me, and you wouldn’t be looking at me now as if you were afraid to believe your own ears.  What is there so very wonderful in my wanting to marry you?  I don’t set up for being a saint.  When I was a younger man I was no better (and no worse) than other young men.  I’m getting on now to middle life.  I don’t want romances and adventures—­I want an easy existence with a nice lovable woman who will make me