Harold drew another ring from his pocket and slipped it softly on her
third finger. Isabel saw by the glitter that there was a diamond in it.
Harold had bought it the day before for that very purpose. Then he took
from a small box a plain gold locket, with the letter H raised on it. "I
want you to wear this," he said, "as a keepsake for me."
"But why H?" Isabel asked him, looking a little puzzled. "Your name's
Ernest, isn't it?"
Harold smiled as well as he was able. "How absurd it is!" he said, with
an effort at gaiety. "This ridiculous similarity pursues us everywhere.
No, my name's Harold."
Isabel stood for a moment surprised and hesitating. She really hardly
knew for the second which brother she ought to consider herself engaged
to. "Then it wasn't you who wrote to me?" she said, with a tone of some
surprise and a little start of astonishment.
"No, I certainly didn't write to you; but I came here to-day expecting
to see you, and meaning to ask you to be my wife. I learned from my
brother ("there can be no falsehood in putting it that way," he thought
vainly to himself) that you were to be here; and I determined to seize
the opportunity. Ernest meant to have come, too, but I believe he must
have lost the train at Clapham Junction." That was all literally true,
and yet it sounded simple and plausible enough.
Isabel looked at him with a puzzled look, and felt almost compelled to
laugh, the situation was so supremely ridiculous. It took a moment to
think it all out rationally. Yet, after all, though the letter came from
the other brother, Ernest, it was this particular brother, Harold, she
had been talking to and admiring all the day; it was this particular
brother, Harold, who had gained her consent, and whom she had promised
to love and to marry. And at that moment it would have been doing Isabel
Walters an injustice not to admit that in her own soul she did then and
there really love Harold Carnegie.
"Harold," she said slowly, as she took the locket and hung it round her
neck, "Harold. Yes, now I know. Then, Harold Carnegie, I shall take your
locket and wear it always as a keepsake from you." And she looked up at
him with a smile in which there was something more than mere passing
coquettish fancy. You see, he was really terribly in earnest; and the
very fact that he should have been so anxious to anticipate his brother,
and should have anticipated him successfully, made her woman's heart go
forth toward him instinctively. As Harold himself said, he was there
bodily present before her; while Ernest, the writer of the mysterious
letter, was nothing more to her in reality than a name and a shadow.
Harold had asked her, and won her; and she was ready to love and cleave
to Harold from that day forth for that very reason. What woman of them
all has a better reason to give in the last resort for the faith that is
in her?