"You don't offend me--you do worse, you distress me."

Isabel's color began to rise. The merriment died out of her face; she
looked at Moody gravely. "I don't like to be accused of distressing
people when I don't deserve it," she said. "I had better leave you. Let
me by, if you please."

Having committed one error in offending her, Moody committed another in
attempting to make his peace with her. Acting under the fear that she
would really leave him, he took her roughly by the arm.

"You are always trying to get away from me," he said. "I wish I knew how
to make you like me, Isabel."

"I don't allow you to call me Isabel!" she retorted, struggling to free
herself from his hold. "Let go of my arm. You hurt me."

Moody dropped her arm with a bitter sigh. "I don't know how to deal with
you," he said simply. "Have some pity on me!"

If the steward had known anything of women (at Isabel's age) he would
never have appealed to her mercy in those plain terms, and at the
unpropitious moment. "Pity you?" she repeated contemptuously. "Is that
all you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!"
She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into the
pockets of her apron. That was how she pitied him! His face turned paler
and paler--he writhed under it.

"For God's sake, don't turn everything I say to you into ridicule!" he