But there should be compromise:  one must not—­one need not—­cheat him of the pride of his manhood.  Isabel’s heart ached for her lover.  She could not defend herself against him any longer, and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, “You may yield now.  Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well as unkind.”

She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe had vanished.  His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he began to taste the sweetness of his victory.  “Have I won you?” he whispered, his voice as unsteady as a boy’s in his first passion.  “You won’t fail me?”

“Oh never! never!”

“You have the most beautiful eyes in the world.  I believe one reason why I always secretly liked Val was that his eyes reminded me of yours.  I can’t stand it when he looks at me under your eyelashes.  I always want to say ‘Here take it Val.’”

“Take what?”

“Anything he wants.  I’m going to extend a protecting wing over my young brother-in-law.  He shall not, no, I swear he shall not come to grief.  I can’t stand it, he’s too like you.  When did you first fall in love with me?”

“When did you?”

“The night you went to sleep in the garden at Wanhope.”

“Oh! when you kissed me?”

“When I—?”

Isabel was speechless.

“How do you know I kissed you, Isabel?  I thought you were asleep.”

“So I was,” said Isabel, blushing deeply.  “Oh!  Captain Hyde, I wasn’t pretending!  But I woke up directly after, and heard a rustling in the wood, and I—­I knew, don’t ask me:  I could feel -”

“This?”

“Yes,” Isabel murmured, resigning herself.

“How strange!” said Lawrence under his breath.  “You were asleep and you felt me kiss you?”

She looked up at him through her eyelashes.  “Is that so strange?”

“Rather:  because I never did kiss you.”

“Not?”

“No:  I bent over you to do it, but you were so defenceless and so young, I didn’t dare.—­ Isabel! my darling! what have I done?”

The first days of love are supposed to be blind days, but too often they are days of overstrained criticism, when from very fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not exist.  The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an exquisite joy to Isabel.  This trivial, crucial scruple, of morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign of a chastity of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the coarse and careless sins that he had never denied.  After all no marriage on earth is perfect, and husbands as well as wives have to make allowances; but as years go on, and affection does its daily work, the rubs are less and less felt, till the time comes when deeper wisdom can look back smiling on the fears of youth.  Isabel at nineteen did not possess this wisdom but she had youth itself.