"It was against my will," she pursued, "that my aunt concealed the truth from you. I did wrong to consent to it, I will do wrong no more. Your mother is right, Alfred. After what has happened, I am not fit to be your wife until my innocence is proved. It is not proved yet."
The angry color began to rise in his face once more. "Take care," he said; "I am not in a humor to be trifled with."
"I am not trifling with you," she answered, in low, sad tones.
"You really mean what you say?"
"I mean it."
"Don"t be obstinate, Isabel. Take time to consider."
"You are very kind, Alfred. My duty is plain to me. I will marry you--if you still wish it--when my good name is restored to me. Not before."
He laid one hand on her arm, and pointed with the other to the guests in the distance, all leaving the tent on the way to their carriages.
"You r good name will be restored to you," he said, "on the day when I make you my wife. The worst enemy you have cannot a.s.sociate _my_ name with a suspicion of theft. Remember that and think a little before you decide. You see those people there. If you don"t change your mind by the time they have got to the cottage, it"s good-by between us, and good-by forever. I refuse to wait for you; I refuse to accept a conditional engagement. Wait, and think. They"re walking slowly; you have got some minutes more."
He still held her arm, watching the guests as they gradually receded from view. It was not until they had all collected in a group outside the cottage door that he spoke himself, or that he permitted Isabel to speak again.
"Now," he said, "you have had your time to get cool. Will you take my arm, and join those people with me? or will you say good-by forever?"
"Forgive me, Alfred!" she began, gently. "I cannot consent, in justice to you, to shelter myself behind your name. It is the name of your family; and they have a right to expect that you will not degrade it--"
"I want a plain answer," he interposed sternly. "Which is it? Yes, or No?"
She looked at him with sad compa.s.sionate eyes. Her voice was firm as she answered him in one word as he had desired. The word was--
"No."
Without speaking to her, without even looking at her, he turned and walked back to the cottage.
Making his way silently through the group of visitors--every one of whom had been informed of what had happened by his sister--with his head down and his lips fast closed, he entered the parlor and rang the bell which communicated with his foreman"s rooms at the stables.
"You know that I am going abroad on business?" he said, when the man appeared.
"Yes, sir."
"I am going to-day--going by the night train to Dover. Order the horse to be put to instantly in the dogcart. Is there anything wanted before I am off?"
The inexorable necessities of business a.s.serted their claims through the obedient medium of the foreman. Chafing at the delay, Hardyman was obliged to sit at his desk, signing checks and pa.s.sing accounts, with the dogcart waiting in the stable yard.
A knock at the door startled him in the middle of his work. "Come in,"
he called out sharply.
He looked up, expecting to see one of the guests or one of the servants.
It was Moody who entered the room. Hardyman laid down his pen, and fixed his eyes sternly on the man who had dared to interrupt him.
"What the devil do _you_ want?" he asked.
"I have seen Miss Isabel, and spoken with her," Moody replied. "Mr.
Hardyman, I believe it is in your power to set this matter right. For the young lady"s sake, sir, you must not leave England without doing it."
Hardyman turned to his foreman. "Is this fellow mad or drunk?" he asked.
Moody proceeded as calmly and as resolutely as if those words had not been spoken. "I apologize for my intrusion, sir. I will trouble you with no explanations. I will only ask one question. Have you a memorandum of the number of that five-hundred pound note you paid away in France?"
Hardyman lost all control over himself.
"You scoundrel!" he cried, "have you been prying into my private affairs? Is it _your_ business to know what I did in France?"
"Is it _your_ vengeance on a woman to refuse to tell her the number of a bank-note?" Moody rejoined, firmly.
That answer forced its way, through Hardyman"s anger, to Hardyman"s sense of honor. He rose and advanced to Moody. For a moment the two men faced each other in silence. "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!"
He sat down again at his desk, with sullen submission to the new disaster. "All I can say is you"re at liberty to look for it," he replied. "I must have dropped it somewhere." He turned impatiently to the foreman, "Now then! What is the next check wanted? I shall go mad if I wait in this d.a.m.ned place much longer!"
Moody left him, and found his way to the servants" offices. "Mr.
Hardyman has lost his pocketbook," he said. "Look for it, indoors and out--on the lawn, and in the tent. Ten pounds reward for the man who finds it!"
Servants and waiters instantly dispersed, eager for the promised reward.
The men who pursued the search outside the cottage divided their forces.
Some of them examined the lawn and the flower-beds. Others went straight to the empty tent. These last were too completely absorbed in pursuing the object in view to notice that they disturbed a dog, eating a stolen lunch of his own from the morsels left on the plates. The dog slunk away under the canvas when the men came in, waited in hiding until they had gone, then returned to the tent, and went on with his luncheon.
Moody hastened back to the part of the grounds (close to the shrubbery) in which Isabel was waiting his return.
She looked at him, while he was telling her of his interview with Hardyman, with an expression in her eyes which he had never seen in them before--an expression which set his heart beating wildly, and made him break off in his narrative before he had reached the end.
"I understand," she said quietly, as he stopped in confusion. "You have made one more sacrifice to my welfare. Robert! I believe you are the n.o.blest man that ever breathed the breath of life!"
His eyes sank before hers; he blushed like a boy. "I have done nothing for you yet," he said. "Don"t despair of the future, if the pocketbook should not be found. I know who the man is who received the bank note; and I have only to find him to decide the question whether it _is_ the stolen note or not."
She smiled sadly as his enthusiasm. "Are you going back to Mr. Sharon to help you?" she asked. "That trick he played me has destroyed _my_ belief in him. He no more knows than I do who the thief really is."
"You are mistaken, Isabel. He knows--and I know." He stopped there, and made a sign to her to be silent. One of the servants was approaching them.
"Is the pocketbook found?" Moody asked.
"No, sir."
"Has Mr. Hardyman left the cottage?"
"He has just gone, sir. Have you any further instructions to give us?"
"No. There is my address in London, if the pocketbook should be found."