“Forgive you—for what?”
“For the pain I have caused you of late.”
“It is all gone—it is all forgotten! You have been vexed, grieved about something that has wrung you in secret. But you should have told me of it, dearest Jasper, and I would have consoled you. But it is all, all over now; nay, but I am now glad of it, since this great joy is all the sweeter for the past sorrow.”
“And do you love me well enough, Theresa, to make a sacrifice, a great sacrifice for me?”
“To sacrifice my heart’s blood—ay, my life, if to do so would make you happy.”
“Your life, silly wench! how should your little life profit me? But that is the way ever with you women. If one ask you the smallest trifle, you ever proffer your lives, as if they could be of any use, or as if one would not be hanged for taking them. I have known girls refuse one kiss, and then make a tender of their lives.”
He spoke with something of his late habitual bitterness, it is true; but there was a smile on his face, as he uttered the words, and she laughed merrily, as she answered,
“Oh! I will not refuse you fifty of those; I will be only too glad if you think them worth the taking. But I did speak foolishly, dearest; and you must not blame me for it, for my heart is so overflowing with joy, that, of a truths I scarcely know what I say. I only wished to express that there is nothing in the wide world which you can ask of me, that I will not do, willingly, gladly. Will that satisfy you, Jasper?”
“Why, ay! if you hold to it, Theresa,” he answered, eagerly; “but, mind you, it is really a sacrifice which I ask—a great sacrifice.”
“No sacrifice is great,” she replied, pressing his arm, on which she was hanging with both her white hands linked together over it, “no sacrifice which I can make, so long as you love me.”