Mrs. Osborn hesitated:  “I should rather not tell you.”

“But you must tell me:  my name has been brought into this, and I must know.”

While she listened her eyes flashed and when she spoke her voice trembled with excitement and anger.  “These things are not true,” she said.  “Only Rowan and I know what passed between us.  I told no one, he told no one, and it is no one’s right to know.  A great wrong has been done him and a great wrong has been done me; and I shall stay here until these wrongs are righted.”

“And is it your feeling that you must begin with me?” said Mrs. Osborn, bitterly.

“Yes, Kate; you should not have believed these things.  You remember our once saying to each other that we would try never to believe slander or speak slander or think slander?  It is unworthy of you to have done so now.”

“Do you realize to whom you are speaking, and that what I have done has been through friendship for you?”

Isabel shook her head resolvedly.  “Your friendship for me cannot exact of you that you should be untrue to yourself and false to others.  You say that you refuse to speak to Rowan on the street.  You say that you have broken up the friendship between Mr. Osborn and him.  Rowan is the truest friend Mr. Osborn has ever had; you know this.  But in breaking off that friendship, you have done more than you have realized:  you have ended my friendship with you.”

“And this is gratitude for my devotion to you and my willingness to fight your battles!” said Mrs. Osborn, rising.

“You cannot fight my battles without fighting Rowan’s.  My wish to marry him or not to marry him is one thing; my willingness to see him ruined is another.”

Isabel drove home.  She rang the bell as though she were a stranger.  When her maid met her at the door, overjoyed at her return, she asked for her grandmother and passed at once into her parlors.  As she did so, Mrs. Conyers came through the hall, dressed to go out.  At the sound of Isabel’s voice, she, who having once taken hold of a thing never let it go, dropped her parasol; and as she stooped to pick it up, the blood rushed to her face.

“I wish to speak to you,” said Isabel, coming quickly out into the hall as though to prevent her grandmother’s exit.  Her voice was low and full of shame and indignation.

“I am at your service for a little while,” said Mrs. Conyers, carelessly; “later I am compelled to go out.”  She entered the parlors, followed by Isabel, and, seating herself in the nearest chair, finished buttoning her glove.

Isabel sat silent a moment, shocked by her reception.  She had not realized that she was no longer the idol of that household and of its central mind; and we are all loath to give up faith in our being loved still, where we have been loved ever.  She was not aware that since she had left home she had been disinherited.  She would not have cared had she known; but she was now facing what was involved in the disinheritance—­dislike; and in the beginning of dislike there was the ending of the old awe with which the grandmother had once regarded the grandchild.