"I mustn't- I can't!" cried the girl.
"Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you
should make me so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for
you, it has none for me."
"I'm not bent on a life of misery," said Isabel. "I've always been
intensely determined to be happy, and I've often believed I should be.
I've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every
now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not
by turning away, by separating myself."
"By separating yourself from what?"
"From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most
people know and suffer."
Lord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. "Why, my
dear Miss Archer," he began to explain with the most considerate
eagerness, "I don't offer you any exoneration from life or from any
chances or dangers whatever. I wish I could; depend upon it I would!
For what do you take me, pray? Heaven help me, I'm not the Emperor
of China! All I offer you is the chance of taking the common lot in
a comfortable sort of way. The common lot? Why, I'm devoted to the
common lot! Strike an alliance with me, and I promise you that you
shall have plenty of it.
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