"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.