When a honeymoon has been thus disturbed the idyll is over, and the only safe thing for the two human creatures who have thus played too long the dangerous drama of Love in Idleness is to get back with as little delay as possible to common life and work. Most frequently it is the woman who retards this salutary change of scene, hoping fondly that the idyll may come back, and fearing the ordinary routine which must separate to some extent the two existences. But Isabel was not in the innocent, primitive position which could render such a delusion possible. She had thought that this alone was life, and that all that went before was a dream; but every day, as it went on, made her more and more aware that the past was no dream, that it could not be severed from her soul, or sink into annihilation, however rapturous and vivid the present might be. She sat at the window of her lodging and did her fancy work, and watched her husband’s moods, and longed to be back. Oh, to be back!—if he were but a labouring man in a cottage going out to his wholesome work, coming in to find everything prepared for him, his wife and his house bright with smiles at his approach—instead of the lounging, the caressing, the vacancy, the fits of fondness and fits of sullenness, and anxious watching of the changes of his face.

‘Did not you once speak of a farm, Horace?’ she said with a hesitation that was almost timidity, when he had himself burst forth into an angry exclamation about the dullness of the place.

‘I hate this country,’ he said, with impatience; ‘but if you have made {265}up your mind you won’t go to America——’

‘Indeed I never said so.’

‘No, of course you never did; but it comes to the same thing. And by the way, I bought some of Smeaton’s stock.’ he said; ‘I thought I might have to wait and kick my heels at your door, Isabel, longer than you made me do. You were kinder than I expected. I thought I might have had to wait, and that I had better be doing something. I had forgotten all about that.’

He thought he might have had to wait! The tone in which he said it was not unkind, but there was in it that note of incipient scorn which a woman’s ear is so fine to catch. She had yielded sooner than he expected. She had been an easy conquest after all his wrongs to her! The arrow went through and through Isabel’s heart. Sudden shame and humiliation so penetrated her that all power of speech was gone for the moment. No wonder her friends, the country-side, all who knew her, should disapprove and look on her coldly—when even he——

‘Was it a farm in our own parish you thought of?’ she cried, faltering, after a pause.

‘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{266} 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.’

Next day she was left alone to think over all this, and exaggerate all her difficulties in her own silent mind, closed up from all possibility of help or sympathy. Stapylton went off to Kilcranion in the morning, to look, as he said, for a house. He did not ask her to go with him, but took it for granted that she should remain behind with her fancy work, and be ready to receive him when he arrived by the evening boat. When she had watched the morning boat depart which conveyed him away, and found herself alone standing on the shore in this strange place where she knew no one, Isabel felt herself seized upon by the strangest tumult of feeling. She was free. His back was turned who was dearest to her, and yet whom she had begun to fear. Oh, if she had wings like a dove to flee to her baby! Oh, to go to Margaret!

A yearning came over her such as she could not restrain. She cried aloud, as the sheep do on the hill, in mournfullest bleating, for the lost lambs. Oh, her baby!—her nursling, taken out of her bosom! not by God, which must be borne; but by a caprice—a mistake—the unkind will of a man.

‘Will he no be in to his dinner?’ said the landlad............