“I loved you before your success, Madam, therefore you know my love honest, and your success I value not because it does but give you hundreds of lovers more to plunge me in jealousy and despair. Yet tonight—though I had rehearsed all your charms and each a dagger in my heart, I discovered something—O how can I name the unspeakable!—even more bewitching. Indeed you are a jewel a King might wear in his crown. Beloved, worshipt, O hear your adorer. My dearest life, I entreat!” She drew herself back against the wainscot and stood there quivering, but with a courage that surprised herself after to recall it. ’Twas the courage of the deer at bay. “My Lord, I have returned you no answer and you had done better to take that as it was meant. But since it is not so I will ask you this. What do you offer me?” The clear candour of her tone together with her direct gaze for a moment nonplussed him, but he recovered his coolness quickly. Aha! so the sweet frost-piece could traffic against her virtue! Then the bargain was all but sealed. “Madam, my whole heart. My adoration. My entire and eternal devotion. And more.” “What more, Sir?” “Madam, yourself shall write what conditions you will and this hand subscribe them unread—even to the half of my kingdom, as another lover said long since.” “That lover addrest his offer to his wife, my Lord, if I remember the Scripture rightly. Do you?” There was a moment’s silence. It came so unexpected. His outstretched hand fell by his side—his eye wavered. What? But no, ’twas impossible. She was but setting her merit high that there might be margin for a descent when the terms were fixed. To parley was the beginning of surrender. “My charmer knows there is nothing I can refuse her. I am acquiescent to her lightest command. And if a mere ceremony which is nothing in the eye of true affection can solace her timid scruples I own ’tis a matter to be considered——” “Your Lordship had not already considered it?” “Why no—I own it. ’Tis love that’s all to my mind,—the true union of two minds and bodies formed to harmonize for eternity. What should a currish parson have to do between my charmer and me? And how could he still further strengthen a bond that only death can end? My restless days and miserable nights teach me that my darling is all to me. Can any foolish ceremony bind me to more? All I have and am is yours. Take and use me as you will.” “In short, your Lordship offers me the position of your mistress. Setting aside all protestations it comes to this.” “Why that harsh name that the world misuses, my beloved? It is true you shall be my mistress for I will be the humblest and faithfullest of all your servants. But what I offer you is to be my heart’s empress, and these blushing hesitating questions of yours assure me that I am not odious to my angel.”