ke to think you are while you sit here
with me. But that's not how you strike me."

"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes
it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss
Osmond?"

"No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons."

"I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons."

"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw
for them."

"Ah, really in love--really in love!" Lord Warburton exclaimed, folding
his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. "You
must remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I
once was."

"Well, if you're sure," said Isabel, "it's all right."

He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before
him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to
his friend. "Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?" She met his eyes,
and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to
be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his
expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own
account--that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a
hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an
instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying
her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or
of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely
personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they
were conscious of at the moment.

"My dear Lord Warburton," she said, smiling, "you may do, so far as I'm
concerned, whatever comes into your head."

And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where,
within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of
gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they
had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself
regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away--all the
more as Lord Warburton didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however,
and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that
when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Edward Rosier still
planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. "You did
right not to go away. I've some comfort for you."

"I need it," the young man softly wailed, "wh