Ask any thing but that.
An hour had not quite passed, when, as she sat alone in her little gayly-decorated study, with its walls hung with water-color drawings of her own execution, its tables strewn with poetry and music of her own composition, and her favorite books, and her own lute—her little study in which the happiest hours of her life had been spent, the first hours of her married life, while Jasper was all that her fancy painted him—his step came along the corridor, but with a slow and hesitating sound, most unlike to the quick, firm, decided tread, for which he was remarkable.
She noticed the difference, it is true, at the moment, but forgot it again instantly. It was enough! It was he! and he was coming once again to seek her in her own apartment; he had a boon to ask of her—he had promised to love her—he had called her “his dear Theresa.”
And now she sprung up, with her soul beaming from her eyes, and ran to meet him. The door was opened ere he reached it, and as he entered, she fell upon his neck, and wound her snowy arms about his waist, and kissed him fifty times, and wept silent tears in the fullness of her joy.
And did not his heart respond in the least to her innocent and girlish rapture; did he not bend at all from his bad purpose; was there no melting, no relenting in that callous, selfish nature; was, indeed, all within him hard as the nether millstone?
He clasped her, he caressed her, he spoke to her fondly, lovingly, he kissed, like Judas, to betray. He suffered her to lead him to his favorite seat of old, the deep, softly-cushioned, low arm-chair, and to place her footstool by his side, and nestle herself down upon it as she used to do, with her arms folded negligently across his knee, and her beautiful rounded chin propped upon them, with her great earnest eyes looking up in his face, like unfathomable wells of tenderness.
And he returned her gaze of fondness, unabashed, unembarrassed; and yet it was sometime before he spoke; and when he did speak at length, his voice was altered and almost husky. But it was from doubt how best he might play his part, not that he shrunk from the task he had imposed upon himself, either for shame or for pity.
“Well, my Theresa,” he said, at last, “have you thought whether you will make this sacrifice?”
“No, Jasper, I have not thought about it; but if you wish me to make it, I will make it, and it will be no sacrifice.”
“But I tell you, Theresa, that it is a sacrifice, a mighty and most painful sacrifice; a sacrifice so great and so terrible, that I almost fear, almost feel that it would be selfish in me to ask it of you.”