a good wife.  You’re the woman, I tell you again.  I know it by what I’ve seen of you myself, and by what I have heard of you from Lady Lydiard.  She said you were prudent, and sweet-tempered, and affectionate; to which I wish to add that you have just the face and figure that I like, and the modest manners and the blessed absence of all slang in your talk, which I don’t find in the young women I meet with in the present day.  That’s my view of it:  I think for myself.  What does it matter to me whether you’re the daughter of a Duke or the daughter of a Dairyman?  It isn’t your father I want to marry—­it’s you.  Listen to reason, there’s a dear!  We have only one question to settle before we go back to your aunt.  You wouldn’t answer me when I asked it a little while since.  Will you answer now? Do you like me?”

Isabel looked up at him timidly.

“In my position, sir,” she asked, “have I any right to like you?  What would your relations and friends think, if I said Yes?”

Hardyman gave her waist a little admonitory squeeze with his arm

“What?  You’re at it again?  A nice way to answer a man, to call him ‘Sir,’ and to get behind his rank as if it was a place of refuge from him!  I hate talking of myself, but you force me to it.  Here is my position in the world—­I have got an elder brother; he is married, and he has a son to succeed him, in the title and the property.  You understand, so far?  Very well!  Years ago I shifted my share of the rank (whatever it may be) on to my brother’s shoulders.  He is a thorough good fellow, and he has carried my dignity for me, without once dropping it, ever since.  As for what people may say, they have said it already, from my father and mother downward, in the time when I took to the horses and the farm.  If they’re the wise people I take them for, they won’t be at the trouble of saying it all over again.  No, no.  Twist it how you may, Miss Isabel, whether I’m single or whether I’m married, I’m plain Alfred Hardyman; and everybody who knows me knows that I go on my way, and please myself.  If you don’t like me, it will be the bitterest disappointment I ever had in my life; but say so honestly, all the same.”

Where is the woman in Isabel’s place whose capacity for resistance would not have yielded a little to such an appeal as this?

“I should be an insensible wretch,” she replied warmly, “if I didn’t feel the honor you have done me, and feel it gratefully.”

“Does that mean you will have me for a husband?” asked downright Hardyman.

She was fairly driven into a corner; but (being a woman) she tried to slip through his fingers at the last moment.