an
yours. Tell the Duke what I say;--tell him with what language a son
may use to his father. And remember that all you ask for yourself you
will ask doubly for me."

"I will ask him so that he cannot refuse me."

"If you do I shall be contented. And now go. I have said ever so
much, and I am tired."

"Isabel! Oh, my love!"

"Yes; Isabel;--your love! I am that at any rate for the present,--and
proud to be so as a queen. Well, if it must be, this once,--as I have
been so hard to you." Then she gave him her cheek to kiss, but of
course he took more than she gave.

When he got out into the street it was dark and there was still
standing the faithful cab. But he felt that at the present moment it
would be impossible to sit still, and he dismissed the equipage. He
walked rapidly along Brook Street into Park Lane, and from thence to
the park, hardly knowing whither he went in the enthusiasm of the
moment. He walked back to the Marble Arch, and thence round by the
drive to the Guard House and the bridge over the Serpentine, by the
Knightsbridge Barracks to Hyde Park Corner. Though he should give
up everything and go and live in her own country with her, he would
marry her. His politics, his hunting, his address to the Queen, his
horses, his guns, his father's wealth, and his own rank,--what were
they all to Isabel Boncassen? In meeting her he had met the one human
being in all the world who could really be anything to him either
in friendship or in love. When she had told him what she would do
for him to make his home happy, it had seemed to him that all other
delights must fade away from him for ever. How odious were Tifto and
his racehorses, how unmeaning the noise of his club, how terrible the
tedium of those parliamentary benches! He could not tell his love as
she had told hers! He acknowledged to himself that his words could
not be as her words,--nor his intellect as hers. But his heart could
be as true. She had spoken to him of his name, his rank, and all his
outside world around him. He would make her understand at last that
they were nothing to him in comparison with her. When he had got
round to Hyde Park Corner, he felt that he was almost compelled to go
back again to Brook Street. In no other place could there be anything
to interest him;--nowhere else could there be light, or warmth, or
joy! But what would she think of him? To go back hot, and soiled with
mud, in order that he might say one more adieu,--that