To his surprise and embarrassment she began weeping, and hid her face in her handkerchief. He sat mutely watching her, wishing that she would stop, and perplexed at encountering on the very threshold of his inquiries and argument this un-meetable demonstration of a woman’s resources. She presently sobbed out, from behind the perfumed cambric: “You _can’t_ hold me accountable for what I did yesterday, or what I said! I was beside myself! I scarcely know what I thought, or what I said! I acted like a crazy woman--and felt like one, too! It is easy enough for you to be cool and collected about the thing. You are a _man!_” “Yes, I know, Isabel,” he said, kindly, “I understand all that, and I can make all the allowances in the world for you, in your position. But still that doesn’t alter the fact that the thing has been said, and the harm done. To be sure, I suppose, the harm will be only temporary, but as it stands it affects the prospects of more than one person--of two persons, in fact, near to us--very materially. You know what I mean?” “Yes.” “Well, what can be done to remedy it? That is the question. I am not going to blame you, but still the fault _was_ yours, and the steps to set it right ought to be yours, too, oughtn’t they?” “What do you mean?” She looked up now, forgetting her tears. “I am not quite sure what I do mean. I haven’t thought over details. There is simply a given situation, with the question how to get out of it, and the onus of action on you. I want you to help me think what the best way will be.” “How logically you state it! Suppose I disavowed the whole thing, ignored it, refused to do anything or say anything. What then?” “I won’t consider that at all. You couldn’t be so unfair as that--so ungenerous.” “Unfair! Ungenerous!” Isabel rose to her full height, and frowned down at her brother-in-law, without a trace of tears in her eyes. “Fine fairness, distinguished generosity, have been shown to _me_, haven’t they! There has been so much delicacy in regarding _my_ feelings! I ought to leap at the opportunity of smoothing over matters between Mr. Seth and his lady-love. My husband’s awful death, my position here, alone in the world, the shock and suffering of it all--these are mere trifles compared with the importance of seeing that their love affairs are uninterrupted! Perhaps I might get a chance at the funeral to have them kiss and make up--or would you prefer me to leave my dead now and go----” “_Your_ dead!” The brother had risen also, and taken his hat. The exclamation carried in its tone all the bitterness with which his mind had stored itself on his walk back to the farm. Pity for the woman, perhaps something too of innate susceptibility to beauty and grace, had restrained and covered up this bitterness, so that he had supposed it gone. It flamed forth now, in wrathful satire. As she put her handkerchief up again to her eyes, as a token of more tears, he went on, in a cold kind of excitement: