"That reason that I wouldn't tell you- I'll
tell it you after all. It's that I can't escape my fate."
"Your fate?"
"I should try to escape it if I were to marry you."
"I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate as well as
anything else?"
"Because it's not," said Isabel femininely. "I know it's not. It's
not my fate to give up- I know it can't be."
Poor Lord Warburton stared, an interrogative point in either eye.
"Do you call marrying me giving up?"
"Not in the usual sense. It's getting- getting- getting a great
deal. But it's giving up other chances."
"Other chances for what?"
"I don't mean chances to marry," said Isabel, her colour quickly
coming back to her. And then she stopped, looking down with a deep
frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her meaning clear.
"I don't think it presumptuous in me to suggest that you'll gain
more than you'll lose," her companion observed.
"I can't escape unhappiness," said Isabel. "In marrying you I
shall be trying to."
"I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that
I must in candour admit!" he exclaimed with an anxious laugh.
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