She had raised her voice, and the words seemed to ring through the mysterious, silent house. Isabel, who was too inexperienced to avoid yielding a bewildered assent to any strenuous assertion, was so moved by this that she went away wondering, asking herself whether she could be mistaken. But as soon as the door had closed upon her poor Janet’s strength broke down. She threw her apron over her head, and leaned against the wall, silent yet convulsed by a momentary struggle. ‘But I’ll never let on to the world,’ the old woman said to herself, as she came out from under that veil with a fiery sparkle in her worn, old eyes. Poor Ailie had at least one defender ready to stand by her to the death. CHAPTER XXXVII Isabel went out again on her way home with a mingled feeling of relief and bewilderment. She was not nourishing one single thought of herself or her own affairs as she threaded the winding way; and perhaps it was for this reason that the sight of the figure, advancing to meet her as she turned the corner, came upon her with such startling suddenness. Two steps brought her from the solitude of the road immediately in front of him, and these two steps marked the immensely greater revulsion from unselfish solicitude for another to the sudden wild return of her own life into her passive soul, which seemed no actor, but only a spectator of the change. She came round the corner lightly and swiftly with dreaming eyes, looking into the air, which was vacant of everything but the trees and the reflections of sky and water, and all the sweetness of the time--and suddenly looked full into the face of Horace Stapylton, so near to her that he seemed to have sprung from some hiding-place, or dropped from the sky! Had there been even a minute’s interval to prepare her for his appearance, it would have been different. But he came upon her all at once without even a sound of his step on the mossy, grassy path. She stood still and gave a low cry. Her heart gave a leap as to her lips. A sudden colour rushed over her face, and with a pang as sudden, the sense of having betrayed herself rushed after the first thrill of emotion into her heart. ‘Isabel!’ he said, making one rapid step towards her, and taking her hand in his. He would never have ventured to do it, but for her self-betrayal. He had not been taken by surprise. He gazed at her with eyes that shone and glowed with unconcealed feeling. Isabel grew as suddenly pale as she felt the warm pressure of his hand. She drew herself away, and stepped aside, and made him a little formal bow. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, ‘Mr. Stapylton; I did not know you were there. It was--the surprise----’ ‘And then when you recollect, and get over the surprise, you drive me away,’ he said, looking as he had looked in the old days, when he had a lover’s right to her attention, and dared complain and quarrel with her. ‘Why should you drive me away? Why may we not be friends?’