“What, then, are the motives which induce you to wish her to be told of this?”
Rushbrook paused.
“Do you think,” continued Sandford, “the intelligence will give her any satisfaction?”
“Perhaps not.”
“Will it be of any to yourself?”
“The highest in the world.”
“And so all you have been urging upon this occasion, is, at last, only to please yourself.”
“You wrong my meaning—it is her merit which inspires me with the desire of being known to her—it is her sufferings, her innocence, her beauty——”
Sandford stared—Rushbrook proceeded: “It is her——”
“Nay, stop where you are,” cried Sandford; “you are arrived at the zenith of perfection in a woman, and to add one qualification more, would be an anti-climax.”