He clasped her, he caressed her, he spoke to her fondly, lovingly, he kissed, like Judas, to betray. He suffered her to lead him to his favorite seat of old, the deep, softly-cushioned, low arm-chair, and to place her footstool by his side, and nestle herself down upon it as she used to do, with her arms folded negligently across his knee, and her beautiful rounded chin propped upon them, with her great earnest eyes looking up in his face, like unfathomable wells of tenderness. And he returned her gaze of fondness, unabashed, unembarrassed; and yet it was sometime before he spoke; and when he did speak at length, his voice was altered and almost husky. But it was from doubt how best he might play his part, not that he shrunk from the task he had imposed upon himself, either for shame or for pity. “Well, my Theresa,” he said, at last, “have you thought whether you will make this sacrifice?” “No, Jasper, I have not thought about it; but if you wish me to make it, I will make it, and it will be no sacrifice.” “But I tell you, Theresa, that it is a sacrifice, a mighty and most painful sacrifice; a sacrifice so great and so terrible, that I almost fear, almost feel that it would be selfish in me to ask it of you.” “Ask it, then; ask it quickly, that you may see how readily it shall be granted.” “Can you conceive no sacrifice that you would not make to please me?” “None, that you would ask of me.” “Theresa, no one can say what another _might_ ask of them. Husbands, lovers, brothers, have asked strange sacrifices—fearful sacrifices, at woman’s hands; and—they have been made.” “Ask me, then, ask me,” she repeated, smiling, although her face had grown somewhat pale as she listened to his words, and marked his strangely excited manner. “I repeat, there is _no_ sacrifice which you would ask of me, which I will not make. Nay more, there is none which I should think a sacrifice if it is to preserve your love to me, when I feared that I had lost it forever, though how, indeed, I knew not.” “We shall see,” he said, affecting to muse with himself, and ponder deeply. “We shall see; you are a great historian, and have read of all the celebrated women of times past and present. You have heard of the beautiful Mademoiselle Desvieux, she who—” “She who was the promised wife of the great, the immortal Bossuet; and who sacrificed her own happiness, freeing her lover from the claims she held on him, lest a wife should be a clog upon his pure yet soaring ambition, lest an earthly affection should wean him from a higher love, and weaken the cords that were drawing him toward heaven! I have—I have heard of her! Who has not—who does not revere her name—who does not love her?” “And what think you of her sacrifice, Theresa?”