o 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 wors