Moody stopped her before she could open it.
"You are in a great hurry to get to Mr.Hardyman," he remarked.
Isabel looked back at him in surprise.

"You said just now that Mr.
Hardyman was waiting to tell me how to nurse Tommie." "Let him wait," Moody rejoined sternly.

"When I left him, he was sufficiently occupied in expressing his favorable opinion of you to her Ladyship." The steward's pale face turned paler still as he said those words.
With the arrival of Isabel in Lady Lydiard's house "his time had come"-- exactly as the women in the servants' hall had predicted.

At last the impenetrable man felt the influence of the sex; at last he knew the passion of love misplaced, ill-starred, hopeless love, for a woman who was young enough to be his child.

He had already spoken to Isabel more than once in terms which told his secret plainly enough.