“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.