Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 1.djvu/153

 which altogether deferred the need of answering. "Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day."

"Certainly, certainly!" cried Lord Warburton. "I wouldn't bore you for the world."

"You have given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you I will do it justice."

"That's all I ask of you, of course—and that you will remember that 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, without making you miserable."

"There is no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that, if you refuse me, you will kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose."

"You will live to marry a better woman than I."

"Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton, very gravely. "That is fair to neither of us."

"To marry a worse one, then."

"If there are better women than you, then I prefer the bad ones; that's all I can say," he went on, with the same gravity. "There is 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 will speak to you myself, very soon," she said. "Perhaps I shall write to you."

"At your convenience, yes," he answered. "Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that."

"I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a little."