‘Oh, don’t furbish it, Lord Warburton; leave it alone. I like it this way.’
‘Well then, if you like it, I’m more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t make you understand.’
‘You ought at least to try. I’ve a fair intelligence. Are you afraid—afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over.’
These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms—that was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: ‘Lord Warburton, it’s impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty.’ But though she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. The ‘splendid’ security 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?’