"I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that I must
in candour admit!" he exclaimed with an anxious laugh.

"I mustn't--I can't!" cried the girl.

"Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you should make
me so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for you, it has none
for me."

"I'm not bent on a life of misery," said Isabel. "I've always been
intensely determined to be happy, and I've often believed I should be.
I've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every
now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by
turning away, by separating myself."

"By separating yourself from what?"

"From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people
know and suffer."

Lord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. "Why,
my dear Miss Archer," he began to explain with the most considerate
eagerness, "I don't offer you any exoneration from life or from any
chances or dangers whatever. I wish I could; depend upon it I would! For
what do you take me, pray? Heaven help me, I'm not the Emperor of China!
All I offer you is the chance of taking the common lot in a comfortable
sort of way. The common lot? Why, I'm devoted to the common lot! Strike
an alliance with me, and I promise you that you shall have plenty of it.
You shall separate from nothing whatever--not even from your friend Miss
Stackpole."

"She'd never approve of it," said Isabel, trying to smile and take
advantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not a little, for
doing so.

"Are we speaking of Miss Stackpole?" his lordship asked impatiently. "I
never saw a person judge things on such theoretic grounds."

"Now I suppose you're speaking of me," said Isabel with humility; and
she turned away again, for she saw Miss Molyneux enter the gallery,
accompanied by Henrietta and by Ralph.

Lord Warburton's sister addressed him with a certain timidity and
reminded him she ought to return home in time for tea, as she was
expecting company to partake of it. He made no answer--apparently
not having heard her; he was preoccupied, and with good reason. Miss
Molyneux--as if he had been Royalty--stood like a lady-in-waiting.

"Well, I never, Miss Molyneux!" said Henrietta Stackpole. "If I wanted
to go he'd have to go. If I wanted my brother to do a thing he'd have to
do it."

"Oh, Warburton does everything one wants," Miss Molyneux answered with
a quick, sh