o him.

"Well, what were you charged to tell me?"

"I was to say that Mr. Hardyman will give you instructions how to treat
the dog for the future."

Isabel hastened to the door, eager to receive her instructions. Moody
stopped her before she could open it.

"You are in a great hurry to get to Mr. Hardyman," he remarked.

Isabel looked back at him in surprise. "You said just now that Mr.
Hardyman was waiting to tell me how to nurse Tommie."

"Let him wait," Moody rejoined sternly. "When I left him, he was
sufficiently occupied in expressing his favorable opinion of you to her
Ladyship."

The steward's pale face turned paler still as he said those words.
With the arrival of Isabel in Lady Lydiard's house "his time had
come"--exactly as the women in the servants' hall had predicted. At last
the impenetrable man felt the influence of the sex; at last he knew the
passion of love misplaced, ill-starred, hopeless love, for a woman who
was young enough to be his child. He had already spoken to Isabel
more than once in terms which told his secret plainly enough. But the
smouldering fire of jealousy in the man, fanned into flame by Hardyman,
now showed itself for the first time. His looks, even more than his
words, would have warned a woman with any knowledge of the natures of
men to be careful how she answered him. Young, giddy, and inexperienced,
Isabel followed the flippant impulse of the moment, without a thought
of the consequences. "I'm sure it's very kind of Mr. Hardyman to speak
favorably of me," she said, with a pert little laugh. "I hope you are
not jealous of him, Mr. Moody?"

Moody was in no humor to make allowances for the unbridled gayety of
youth and good spirits.

"I hate any man who admires you," he burst out passionately, "let him be
who he may!"

Isabel looked at her strange lover with unaffected astonishment. How
unlike Mr. Hardyman, who had treated her as a lady from first to last!
"What an odd man you are!" she said. "You can't take a joke. I'm sure I
didn't mean to offend you."

"You don't offend me--you do worse, you distress me."

Isabel's color began to rise. The merriment died out of her face; she
looked at Moody gravely. "I don't like to be accused of distressing
people when I don't deserve it," she said. "I had better leave you. Let
me by, if you please."

Having committed one error in offending her, Moody committed another in
attempting to make his peace with her. Acting under the fe