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Not even Miss Pink's politeness could submit to such a question as this. She rose indignantly from her chair. "As you aware, Lady Lydiard, that the doubt you have just expressed is an insult to my niece, and a insult to Me?" "Are you aware of who Mr. Hardyman really is?" retorted her Ladyship. "Or do you judge of his position by the vocation in life which he has perversely chosen to adopt?
Isabel, still resting her hand on Robert's arm, felt it tremble a little as Hardyman made this last inquiry. If she had been speaking to one of her equals she would have known how to dispose of the question without directly answering it. But what could she say to the magnificent gentleman on the stately horse?
Attacked on one side by her aunt, and on the other by Hardyman, and feebly defended, at the best, by her own doubts and misgivings, Isabel ended by surrendering at discretion. Like thousands of other women in a similar position, she was in the last degree uncertain as to the state of her own heart.
"He did something, I suppose, besides telling you that the bath was useless?" "He took a knife out of his pocket, with a lancet in it." Isabel clasped her hands with a faint cry of horror. "Oh, Mr. Moody! did he hurt Tommie?" "Hurt him?" "Hurt him, indeed! Mr. Hardyman bled the brute " "Brute?" Isabel reiterated, with flashing eyes. "I know some people, Mr.
Isabel pointed to the villas, as a necessary concession to good manners, before the groom could anticipate her. "My aunt lives there, sir; at the house called The Lawn." "Ah! to be sure!" said Hardyman. "I oughtn't to have wanted reminding; but I have so many things to think of at the farm. And I am afraid I must be getting old my memory isn't as good as it was.
You won't tell me eh? May I ask you something else? Are you staying in our neighborhood?" There was no alternative before Isabel but to answer this last question. Hardyman had met her out walking, and had no doubt drawn the inevitable inference although he was too polite to say so in plain words. "Yes, sir," she answered, shyly, "I am staying in this neighborhood." "And who is your relation?"
He found Isabel in some agitation. And there, by her side, with his tail wagging slowly, and his eye on Hardyman in expectation of a possible kick there was the lost Tommie! "Has Lady Lydiard gone?" Isabel asked eagerly. "Yes," said Hardyman. "Where did you find the dog?" As events had ordered it, the dog had found Isabel, under these circumstances.
Hardyman was at the stables, Lady Lydiard gave the servant her card. "Take that to your master, and say I won't detain him five minutes." With these words, her Ladyship sauntered into the grounds.
"You're a bold fellow," said Hardyman, with a sudden change from anger to irony. "I'll do the lady justice. I'll look at my pocketbook." He put his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat; he searched his other pockets; he turned over the objects on his writing-table. The book was gone. Moody watched him with a feeling of despair. "Oh! Mr. Hardyman, don't say you have lost your pocketbook!"
Hardyman gravely declared that he understood her perfectly. "Perfectly!" he repeated, with his impenetrable obstinacy. "Your Ladyship exactly expresses my opinion of Miss Isabel. Prudent, and cheerful, and sweet-tempered, as you say all the qualities in a woman that I admire. With good looks, too of course, with good looks. I may claim to know something about it.
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