The Mettle of the Pasture | Page 3

of her hair,
the fineness of her skin, her nobly cast figure,--all these were evidences
of descent from a people, that had reached in her the purity, without
having lost the vigor, of one of its highest types.
She had supposed that when he came the servant would receive him
and announce his arrival, but in a little while the sound of a step on the
gravel reached her ear; she paused and listened. It was familiar, but it
was unnatural--she remembered this afterwards.
She began to walk away from him, her beautiful head suddenly arched
far forward, her bosom rising and falling under her clasped hands, her
eyes filling with wonderful light. Then regaining composure because
losing consciousness of herself in the thought of him, she turned and
with divine simplicity of soul advanced to meet him.
Near the centre of the garden there was an open spot where two
pathways crossed; and it was here, emerging from the shrubbery, that
they came in sight of each other. Neither spoke. Neither made in
advance a sign of greeting. When they were a few yards apart she
paused, flushing through her whiteness; and he, dropping his hat from
his hand, stepped quickly forward, gathered her hands into his and
stood looking down on her in silence. He was very pale and barely
controlled himself.
"Isabel!" It was all he could say.
"Rowan!" she answered at length. She spoke under her breath and
stood before him with her head drooping, her eyes on the ground. Then
he released her and she led the way at once out of the garden.
When they had reached the front of the house, sounds of conversation

on the veranda warned them that there were guests, and without
concealing their desire to be alone they passed to a rustic bench under
one of the old trees, standing between the house and the street; they
were used to sitting there; they had known each other all their lives.
A long time they forced themselves to talk of common and trivial
things, the one great meaning of the hour being avoided by each.
Meanwhile it was growing very late. The children had long before
returned drowsily home held by the hand, their lanterns dropped on the
way or still clung to, torn and darkened. No groups laughed on the
verandas; but gas-jets had been lighted and turned low as people
undressed for bed. The guests of the family had gone. Even Isabel's
grandmother had not been able further to put away sleep from her
plotting brain in order to send out to them a final inquisitive
thought--the last reconnoitring bee of all the In-gathered hive. Now, at
length, as absolutely as he could have wished, he was alone with her
and secure from interruption.
The moon had sunk so low that its rays fell in a silvery stream on her
white figure; only a waving bough of the tree overhead still brushed
with shadow her neck and face. As the evening waned, she had less to
say to him, growing always more silent in new dignity, more mute with
happiness.
He pushed himself abruptly away from her side and bending over
touched his lips reverently to the back of one of her hands, as they lay
on the shawl in her lap.
"Isabel," and then he hesitated.
"Yes," she answered sweetly. She paused likewise, requiring nothing
more; it was enough that he should speak her name.
He changed his position and sat looking ahead. Presently he began
again, choosing his words as a man might search among terrible
weapons for the least deadly.
"When I wrote and asked you to marry me, I said I should come

to-night and receive your answer from your own lips. If your answer
had been different, I should never have spoken to you of my past. It
would not have been my duty. I should not have had the right. I repeat,
Isabel, that until you had confessed your love for me, I should have had
no right to speak to you about my past. But now there is something you
ought to be told at once."
She glanced up quickly with a rebuking smile. How could he wander so
far from the happiness of moments too soon to end? What was his past
to her?
He went on more guardedly.
"Ever since I have loved you, I have realized what I should have to tell
you if you ever returned my love. Sometimes duty has seemed one
thing, sometimes another. This is why I have waited so long--more than
two years; the way was not clear. Isabel, it will never be clear. I believe
now it is wrong to tell you; I believe It is wrong not to tell you. I have
thought