ecurity so offered her was not the greatest
she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was
something very different--something that deferred the need of really
facing her crisis. "Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more
about this to-day."

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

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

"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."

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

He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his
hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. "Do
you know I'm very much afraid of it--of that remarkable mind of yours?"

Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made
her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his
look a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might almost have
appealed to his compassion, "So am I, my lord!" she oddly exclaimed.

His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty
of pity was needed at home. "Ah! be merciful, be merciful," he murmured.

"I think you had better go," said Isabel. "I'll write to you."

"Very good; but whatever you write I