"Do you really find yourself possessed of any sentiment of gratitude toward me? If so, will you do me a favour?"
"Certainly, if I can."
"Thank you. I shall always feel exceedingly obliged. Pray do not look so uneasy, and grow so white; it is a small matter. I gave you the dog years ago, little dreaming that I was thereby providing future discord for my own hearthstone. With a degree of flattering delicacy, which I assure you I appreciate, you decline to sell what was a friendly gift; and now I simply appeal to your generosity, and ask you please to give him back to me."
She recoiled a step, and her fingers clutched each other.
"Oh, Mr. Palma! Don't ask me. I cannot give up my Hero. I would give you anything, everything else that I own."
"Rash little girl! What else have you to give? Yourself?"
He was smiling now, and the unbending of his lips, and glitter of his remarkably fine teeth, gave a strange charm to his countenance, generally so grave.
"You would give yourself away, sooner than that unlucky dog?"
"I belong to my mother. But he belongs to me, and I never, never will part with him!"
"Jacta est alea!" muttered the lawyer, still smiling.