‘I thought of offering for Smeaton’s once,’ he said; ‘but that was on account of you. Now I have got you, it is a different matter; but hang it, Isabel, we can’t go on like this, you know. A man is bored to death here. Will you make up your mind, like a brave girl, to come with me directly and get it over, or shall we go back to Kilcranion, or somewhere, and wait till spring? By that time you ought to have made up your mind.’ ‘Horace,’ she said, still speaking very low, ‘to every thing but one thing I can make up my mind at once, and that one thing I can never do--never! Don’t ask me. I cannot leave my baby behind.’ ‘But, by Jove, if I insist upon it, you _must_!’ he cried, with a certain bravado in his tone. She got up and went to him with a glow as of hidden fire in her eyes. ‘I will not!’ she said. ‘I will do anything--everything else you ask me, but not this!’ With her the crisis had reached the point of desperation. But as for Stapylton, he gazed at her for a moment, and, struck by her passion, turned round with a shrug of his shoulders, and what he meant to be an air of indifference. ‘For Heaven’s sake don’t make a fuss,’ he said. ‘I hate women who make a fuss--though I think you’ve always had rather a turn that way, Isabel. Well, never mind. It is better to wait for spring, anyhow. I’ll run over to Kilcranion to-morrow, and engage one of the sea-bathing houses till April. They should be cheap enough.’ ‘But, Horace,’ said Isabel, with parched and trembling lips, ‘you must understand--not then nor now, can I leave her behind me. It is but one thing. I will do whatever you wish--whatever you tell me, except this.’ He stood eyeing her for a moment, as if uncertain how to deal with this obstinacy. Then he turned away with once more that careless shrug of his shoulders. ‘Of course it is the only thing I do ask,’ he said, ‘as is always the way with women. But never mind: May is better for a long voyage than December; and something may have happened by that time to change the circumstances--or you may have changed your mind.’ ‘What could happen, Horace? and I will never change my mind.’ ‘Well, well, say no more about it,’ he said, ‘and we shall see when the time comes.’