"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.

"Will you forgive me," she said, "if I ask you for a little more time? I
am so bewildered, I hardly know what to say or do for the best. You see,
Mr. Hardyman, it would be a dreadful thing for me to be the cause of
giving offense to your family. I am obliged to think of that. It would
be so distressing for you (I will say nothing of myself) if your friends
closed their doors on me. They might say I was a designing girl, who had
taken advantage of your good opinion to raise herself in the world. Lady
Lydiard warned me long since not to be ambitious about myself and not
to forget my station in life, because she treated me like her adopted
daughter. Indeed--indeed, I can't tell you how I feel your goodness, and
the compliment--the very great compliment, you pay me! My heart is free,
and if I followed my own inclinations--" She checked herself, conscious
that she was on the brink of saying too much. "Will you give me a few
days," she pleaded, "to try if I can think composedly of all this? I
am only a girl, and I feel quite dazzled by the prospect that you set
before me."

Hardyman seized on those words as offering all the encouragement that he
desired to his suit.

"Have your own way in this thing and in everything!" he said, with an
unaccustomed fervor of language and manner. "I am so glad to hear that
your heart is open to me, and that all your inclinations take my part."

Isabel instantly protested against this misrepresentation of what she
had really said, "Oh, Mr. Hardyman, you quite mistake me!"

He answered her very much as he had answered Lady Lydiard, when she had
tried to make him understand his proper relations towards Isabel.

"No, no; I don't mistake you. I agree to every word you say. How can I
expect you to marry me, as you very properly remark, unless I give you a
day or two to make up your mind? It's quite enough for me that you like
the prospect. If Lady Lydiard treated you as her daughter, why shouldn't
you be my wife? It stands to reason that you're quite right to marry a
man who can raise you in the world. I like you to be ambitious--though
Heaven knows it isn't much I can do for y