Bylow Hill | Page 6

an injured amazement, but promptly threw it off, and
when she turned to see if Leonard or Ruth had observed it they were
moving to meet Godfrey. Mrs. Morris was joining the General under
the elm.
"How have I given you pain, dear heart?" asked Isabel, as she and
Arthur took two or three slow steps apart from the rest, so turning her
face that they should see its tender kindness.
"Ah! don't ask me, my beloved!" he warily exclaimed. "It is all gone!
Oh, the heavenly wonder to hear you, Isabel Morris, you--give me
loving names! You might have answered me so differently; but your
voice, your eyes, work miracles of healing, and I am whole again."
Isabel gave again the laugh whose blithe, final sigh was always its most
winning note. Then, with tremendous gravity, she said, "You are very

indiscreet, dear, to let me know my power."
His face clouded an instant, as if the thought startled him with its truth
and value. But when she added, with yet deeper seriousness of brow,
"That's no way to tame a shrew, my love," he laughed aloud, and peace
came again with Isabel's smile.
Then--because a woman must always insist on seeing the wrong side of
the goods--she murmured, "Tell me, Arthur, what disturbed you."
"Words, Isabel, mere words of yours, which I see now were meant in
purest play. You told Leonard"--
"Leonard! What did I tell Leonard, dear?"
"You told him not to confess certain anxieties, even if they were
justified."
"Oh, Arthur!"
"I see my folly, dearest. But Isabel, he ought not to have answered that
the more they were justified, the more they should go unconfessed!"
"Oh, Arthur! the merest, idlest prattle! What meaning could you"--
"None, Isabel, none! Only, my good angel, I so ill deserve you that
with every breath I draw I have a desperate fright of losing you, and a
hideous resentment against whoever could so much as think to rob me
of you."
"Why, dear heart, don't you know that couldn't be done?"
"Oh, I know it, you being what you are, even though I am only what I
am. But, Isabel, you know he loves you. No human soul is strong
enough to blow out the flame of the love you kindle, Isabel Morris, as
one would blow out his bedroom candle and go to sleep at the stroke of
a clock."
"Arthur, I believe Leonard--and I do not say it in his praise--I believe
Leonard can do that!"
"No, not so, not so! Leonard is strong, but the fire of a strong man's
love, however smothered, burns on without mercy, my beautiful, and
you cannot go in and out of that burning house as though it were not on
fire."
"And shall Leonard, then, not be our nearest and best friend, as we had
planned?"
"He shall, Isabel. Ah yes; not one smallest part of your sweet friendship
will I take from him, nor of his from you. For, Isabel, though he were
as weak as I"--

"As weak as I, you should say, dear. You are not weak, Arthur, are
you?"
"Weak as the bending grass, Isabel, under this load of love. But though
he, I say, were as weak as I, you--ah, you!--are as wise as you are
bewitching; and if I should speak to you from my most craven fear, I
could find but one word of warning."
"Oh, you dear, blind flatterer! And what word would that be?"
"That you are most bewitching when you are wisest."
As Isabel softly laughed she cast a dreaming glance behind, and noticed
that she and Arthur were quite hidden in the flowery undergrowth of
the hill path. They kissed.
"Beloved," said her worshipper, with a clouded smile, as he let her
down from her tiptoes, "do you know you took that as though you were
thinking of something else?"
"Did I? Oh, I didn't mean to."
Such a reply only darkened the cloud. "Of whom were you thinking,
Isabel?"
She blushed. "I was think--thinking--why, I was--I--I was
think--thinking"--she went redder and redder as he went pale--"thinking
of everybody on Bylow Hill. Why--why, dear heart, don't you see?
When you"--
"Oh, enough, enough, my angel! I take the question back!"
"You made me think of everybody, Arthur, you were so sudden. Just
suppose I had done so to you!" They both thought that worthy of a
good laugh. "Next time, dear," added Isabel,--"no, no, no, but--next
time, you mustn't be so sudden. There's no need, you know,"--she
blushed again,--"and I promise you I'll give my whole mind to it! Get
me some of that hawthorn bloom yonder, and let's go back."

IV
AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER
This "hill path" was a narrowed continuance of the street, that led