At tea Arthur told Isabel he was going for a long walk down through the
town and across the meadows, and would not be home before bedtime.
Isabel approved heartily, and said Sarah would stay near the sleeping
babe, and she would spend the evening with her mother. She and Arthur
went together as far as the cross-paths in the arbor, and there, in
parting, he clasped and kissed her with a sudden frenzy that only added
one more distressful misgiving to the many that now haunted her days.

She found her mother alone. They sat down, hand in hand, before an open
fire, and had talked in sweet quietness but a short while, when a chance
word and the knowledge that this time they would not be interrupted made
it easy for Isabel to say things she had for weeks been trying to say.




XIV

THE TALKATIVE LEONARD


Across the street the father of Leonard and Ruth, already abed, lay
thinking of their tribulation and casting about in his mind for some new
move that might help to end it happily. Godfrey had not come. He had not
looked for him to appear with a hop, skip, and a jump, "a man under
authority" as he was; but here were five months gone.

"I can't clamor for him," thought he, and feared Ruth had written him
that the emergency was past. And so she had, in those days of new hope
and new suspense which had followed for a while Arthur's withdrawal of