"
"That's all I ask of you, of course- and that you'll remember how
absolutely my happiness is in your hands."
Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she
said after a minute: "I must tell you that what I shall think about is
some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible-
letting you know it without making you miserable."
"There's no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that if you
refuse me you'll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse;
I shall live to no purpose.
"You'll live to marry a better woman than I."
"Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton very gravely.
"That's fair to neither of us."
"To marry a worse one then."
"If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's
all I can say," he went on with the same earnestness. "There's no
accounting for tastes."
His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by
again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. "I'll
speak to you myself- very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you."
"At your convenience, yes," he replied. "Whatever time you take,
it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that.
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