No matter what I might suffer, I should still go on--for your sake." "Why do you talk so ?" she burst out passionately.

"No other man has such a claim as you to my gratitude and regard.

How can you let such thoughts come to you?
I have done nothing in secret.

I have no friends who are not known to you.

Be satisfied with that, Robert--and let us drop the subject." "Never to take it up again ?" he asked, with the infatuated pertinacity of a man clinging to his last hope.
At other times and under other circumstances, Isabel might have answered him sharply.