‘Mr. Stapylton,’ said Isabel, ‘you have nothing to do with me now. You are a stranger, and we were not speaking of your heart. That has nothing--nothing to do with me. I must go home to my baby. I beg of you not to come any further, but to let me go.’ ‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘look at me, don’t turn your eyes away from me: I am not a stranger; you could not make me so were you ever so cruel; the time will never be when we shall have nothing to do with each other, you and I--only look at me! What reason can there be why we should part now?’ ‘Oh, Mr. Stapylton, let me go,’ she said, shrinking aside from him, not venturing to raise her eyes. She dared not look at him as he begged her to do. She knew that her eyes would have betrayed her--that the beating in her temples and the throbbing in her ears would have found some expression in every look she could turn upon him. Never for all these years had her heart beat as it was beating now. She had been a wife and a widow and a mother, and yet the sound of Horace Stapylton’s voice moved her more deeply than all the events of her own life had done. She hated herself for it, but yet it was so. Her heart went out to him past all her power of restraint. And though her face flushed with bitter shame, and her heart ached with self-reproach, yet she could not help it. The only safeguard she had was in flight. ‘Let me go,’ she repeated, keeping her eyes on the ground, and keeping as far apart from him as the narrow path would permit. ‘Yes, if you hate me altogether,’ he said, with vehemence. ‘If you do, I might have spared myself--much, very much, that can’t be undone. If you hate me, I will let you go!’ The sound of his voice went to her heart. She was free to pass, yet she could not refrain from one glance at him. He was trembling; his face was as pale as death, and drawn together with tragic force of passion. And Isabel could not bear this dreadful expression on the face of the man she had once loved. ‘Oh, it is not that I hate you!’ she cried, out of the depths of her heart. ‘Then you love me!’ he said, wildly seizing her hand. ‘Between us there can be no alternative. Oh, Isabel, I have bought you dear! Never send me away again.’ ‘Oh, let me go!’ she repeated, with such a struggle going on within as her whole past life had not experienced. She, Mr. Lothian’s wife, to stand here with a man--any man, be he whom he might, kissing her hand! She, little Margaret’s mother! She could not bear it. She snatched her hand from him, and covered her face with it, and sank down on the grassy bank where she stood. What else could she do but weep her heart out, words being impossible? She could say no more; she could not dare to look at him again. The struggle had come to such a point that there was nothing left for her but the unspeakable utterance of tears.