"Sure, 'tis some angel speaks!" cried M. d'Harville, contemplating his wife with impassioned looks. "Oh, Clemence, you little know the pleasure and the pain you cause me. The severest reproach you ever addressed me--your hardest word or most merited rebuke never touched me as does this angelic devotion, this disregard of self, this generous sacrifice of personal enjoyment. Even despite myself, I feel hope spring up within me. I dare hardly trust myself to believe the blessed future which suggests itself to my imagination." "Ah, you may safely and implicitly believe all I say, Albert! I declare to you, by all that is sacred and solemn, that I have firmly taken the resolution I spoke of, and that I will adhere to it in strictest word and deed. Hereafter I may even be enabled to give you further pledges of my truth." "Pledges!" exclaimed M. d'Harville, more and more excited by a happiness so wholly unlocked for. "What need have I of any pledges? Do not your look, your tone, the heavenly expression of goodness which animates your countenance, the rapturous pulsations of my own heart, all convince me of the truth of your words? But, Clemence, man, you know, is a creature not easily satisfied; and," added the marquis, approaching his wife's chair, "your noble, generous conduct inspires me with the boldness, the courage, to hope--to hope,--yes, Clemence, to venture to hope for that which, only yesterday, I should have considered it even worse than madness to presume to think of." "For mercy's sake, explain yourself!" said Clemence, alarmed at the impassioned words and glances of her husband.