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An hour had quite passed, when, as she sat alone in her
little gayly-decorated study, with its walls hung with water-color
drawing 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 sprang 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?

[figure description] Page 309.[end figure description]

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 some time 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.”

“Ask it, then; ask it quickly, that you may see how readily
it shall be granted.”

“Can you conceive no sacrifice that you would not make to
please me?”

“None that you would ask of me.”

“Theresa, no one can say what another might ask of them.
Husbands, lovers, brothers, have asked strange sacrifices — fearful
sacrifices, at woman's hands; and — they have been made.”

“Ask me, then, ask me,” she repeated, smiling, although her
face had grown somewhat pale as she listened to his words,
and marked his strangely excited manner. “I repeat, there is

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no sacrifice which you would ask of me, which I will not make.
Nay more, there is none which I should think a sacrifice if it
is to preserve your love to me, when I feared that I had lost it
for ever, though how, indeed, I knew not.”

“We shall see,” he said affecting to muse with himself, and
ponder deeply. “We shall see; you are a great historian, and
have read of all the celebrated women of times past and present.
You have heard of the beautiful Mademoiselle Desvieux, she
who — ”

“She who was the promised wife of the great, the immortal
Bossuet; and who sacrificed her own happiness, freeing her
lover from the claims she held on him, lest a wife should be a
clog upon his pure yet soaring ambition, lest an earthly affection
should wean him from a higher love, and weaken the cords
that were drawing him toward heaven! I have — I have heard
of her! Who has not — who does not revere her name — who
does not love her?

“And what think you of her sacrifice, Theresa?”

“That it was her duty. A difficult duty to perform, you will
say, but still her duty. Her praise is, that she performed it gloriously.
And yet I doubt not that her sacrifice bore her its
own exceeding great reward. Loving as she loved, all her
sorrows must have been changed into exultation, when she saw
him in after days the saint he became, the saint she helped to
make him.”

“And could you have made such a sacrifice, Theresa?”

“I hope so, and I think so,” she replied with a little hesitation.
“But it avails not now to think of that, seeing that I can
not make such. She was a maiden, I am a wedded wife.”

“True dearest, true. I only named her, to judge, by your
opinion, of what I wish to learn, ere I will ask you. There
was another sacrifice, Theresa, a very terrible sacrifice, made
of late, and made to no purpose, too, as it fell out — a sacrifice

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of far more doubtful nature; yet there be some who have not
failed to praise it?”

“What was it — do you praise it?”

“At least I pity it, Theresa.”

“What was it? — tell me.”

“After the late rebellion at Sedgemoor. Have you not heard,
Theresa?”

“No, I think not — go on, I want to hear it; go on, Jasper.”

“There was a young man, a cavalier, very young, very
brave, very nobly born, and, it is said, very handsome. He
was taken after the rout of that coward, Gray of Werk's horse—
cast into prison, and, when his turn came, tried by the butcher,
Kirke — you know what that means, Theresa.”

“Condemned,” she said, sadly. “Of course he was condemned—
what next?”

“To be hung by the neck upon the shameful gibbet, and then
cut down, while yet alive, and subjected to all the barbarous
tortures which are inflicted as the penalty of high treason.”

“Horrible! horrible! and — what more, Jasper?”

“Have you not, indeed, heard the tale?”

“Indeed, no, I pray you tell me, for you have moved me
very deeply.”

“It is very moving. The boy had a sister — the loveliest
creature, it is said, that trod the soil of England, scarce seventeen
years of age, a very paragon of grace, and purity, and
beauty. They two were alone in the world — parents, kinsfolk,
friends, they had none. They had none to love but one another,
even as we, my Theresa; and they did love — how, you
may judge. The girl threw herself at the butcher's feet, and
implored her brother's pardon.”

“Go on, go on, Jasper,” cried the young wife, excited almost
beyond the power of restraining her emotions by the dreadful
interest of his tale, “and, for once, he granted it.”

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“And, for once, as you say, he granted it. But upon one
condition.”

“And that was—”

“And that was, that the young girl should make a sacrifice—
an awful sacrifice — should submit, in a word, to be a martyr
for her brother's sake.”

“To die for him — and she died! Of course, she died to
save him; that was no sacrifice, none, Jasper — I say none!
Why, any woman would have done that.”

“It was not to die for him — it was to sacrifice herself—herself—
for she was lovely, as I told you — to the butcher.”

“Ah!” sighed Theresa, with a terrible sensation at her heart,
which she could not explain, even to herself; “and what—
what die she?”

“She asked permission to consult her brother.”

“And he told her that he had rather die ten thousand deaths
than that she should lose one hair's breadth of her honor!”
cried Theresa, enthusiastically clasping her hands together.

“And he told her that life was very sweet, and death on a
gallows very shameful!”

“The caitiff! the miserable, loathsome slave! the filthy dastard!
I trust that Kirke drew him with wild horses! The
gallows were too good for such a slave.”

“Then you would not have made such a sacrifice?”

“I—I!” she exclaimed, her soft, blue eyes actually flashing
fire; “I sacrifice my honor! but lo!” she interrupted herself,
smiling at her own vehemence, “am I not a little fool, to fancy
that you are in earnest? No, dearest Jasper, I would no more
make that sacrifice, than you would suffer me to do so. Did
not I make that reservation? did I not say any sacrifice, which
you would ask of me?”

“Ay, dearest!” he replied, gently laying his hand on her
head, “you do me no more than justice there. I would die as

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many deaths as I have hairs on my head, before you should so
save me.” And for the first time that night Jasper St. Aubyn
spoke in earnest.

“I know you would, Jasper. But go on, I pray you, with
this fearful tale. I would you had not begun it; but now you
have, I must hear it to the end. What did she?”

“She did, Theresa, as her brother bade her. She sacrificed
herself to the butcher!”

“Poor wretch! poor wretch! and so her brother lived with
the world's scorn and curses on his head — and she — did she
die, Jasper?”

“No, my Theresa. She is alive yet. It was the brother
died.”

“How so? how could that be? Did Kirke then relent?”

“Kirke never relented! When the girl awoke in the butcher's
chamber, with fame and honor — all that she loved in life
lost to her for ever — he bade her look out of the window —
what think you she saw there, Theresa?”

“What?”

“The thing, that an hour before was her brother, dangling
in the accursed noose from the gibbet.”

“And God did not speak in thunder?”

“To the girl's mind, he spoke — for that went astray at once,
jangled and jarred, and out of tune for ever! There was a
sacrifice, Theresa.”

“A wicked one, and so it ended, wickedly. We'll none
of such sacrifices, Jasper. If we should ever have to die,
which God avert in his mercy, any death of violence or horror,
we will die tranquilly and together. Will we not, dearest?”

“As you said but now, may the good God guard us from
such a fate, Theresa; and yet,” he added, looking at her fixedly,
and with a strange expression, “we may be nearer to it than
we think for, even now.”

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“Nearer to what, Jasper? speak,” she cried eagerly, as if
she had missed the meaning of the words he last uttered.

“Nearer to the perils of the law, for high treason,” answered
her husband, in a low, dejected voice. “It is of that I have
been anxious to speak with you all the time.”

“Then speak at once, for God's sake, dearest Jasper! speak
at once, and fully, that we may know the worst;” and she
showed more composure now, in what she naturally deemed
the extremity of peril, than he had looked for, judging from the
excitement she had manifested at the mere listening to the
story of another's perils. “Say on,” she added, seeing that he
hesitated, “let me know the worst.”

“It must be so, though it is hard to tell, Theresa; we — myself,
I mean, and a band of the first and noblest youths of England—
have been engaged, these three months past, in a conspiracy,
to banish from the throne of England this last and
basest son of a weak, bigoted, unlucky race of kings — this
cowardly, blood-thirsty, persecuting bigot — this papist monarch
of a protestant land, this James the Second, as men call him;
and to set in his place the brave, wise, virtuous William of
Nassau, now stadtholder of the United Provinces. It is this
business which has obliged me to be absent so often of late, in
London. It is the failure of this business which has rendered
me morsoe, unkind, irritable — need I say more, you have pardoned
me, Theresa.”

“The failure of this business!” she exclaimed, gazing at
him with a face from which dismay had banished every hue of
color, “the failure!”

“Ay, Theresa, it is even so. Had we succeeded in liberating
England from the cold tyrant's bloody yoke, we had been
patriots, saviors, fathers of our country — Brutuses, for what I
know, and Timoleons! We have failed — therefore, we are
rebels, traitors; and, I suppose, ere long shall be victims.”

[figure description] Page 315.[end figure description]

“The plot, then, is discovered?”

“Even so, Theresa.”

“And how long, Jasper, have you known this dreadful termination?”

“I have foreseen it these six weeks or more. I knew it, for
the first time, to-day.”

“And is it absolutely known, divulged, proclaimed? Have
arrests been made?” she asked, with a degree of coolness that
amazed him, while he felt that it augured ill for the success of
his iniquitous scheme; but he had, in some sort, foreseen her
questions, and his answers were prepared already. He answered,
therefore, as unhesitatingly as if there had been one
word of truth in all that he was uttering.

“It is all known to one of the leading ministers of the government;
it is not divulged; and no arrests have been made
yet. But the breathing space will be brief.”

“All, then, is easy! Let us fly! Let us take horse at once—
this very night! By noon to-morrow, we shall be in Plymouth,
and thence we can gain France, and be safe there until
this tyranny shall be o'erpast.”

“Brave girl!” he replied, with the affectation of a melancholy
smile. “Brave Theresa, you would bear exile, ruin,
poverty, with the outlawed traitor; and we might still be happy.
But alas, girl! it is too late to fly. The ports are all
closed throughout England. It is too late to fly, and to fight is
impossible.

“Then it remains only that we die!” she exclaimed, casting
herself into his arms, “and that is not so difficult, now that I know
you love me, Jasper.” But, even as she uttered the words, his
previous conversation recurred to her mind, and she started
from his arms, crying out, “But you spoke of a sacrifice! — a
sacrifice which I could make! Is it possible that I can save
you?”

[figure description] Page 316.[end figure description]

“Not me alone, Theresa, but all the band of brothers who
are sworn to this emprise; nor them alone, but England, which
may, by your deed, still be liberated from the tyrant.”

She turned her beautiful eyes upward, and her lips moved
rapidly, although she spoke not. She was praying for aid from
on high — for strength to do her duty.

He watched her with calm, expectant, unmoved eyes, and
muttered to himself, “I have gained. She will yield.”

“Now,” she said, “now,” as her prayer was ended, “I am
strong now to bear. Tell me, Jasper, what must I do to save
you?”

“I can not tell you, dearest. I can not — it is too much —
you could not make it; nor if you would, could I? Let it
pass. We will die — all die together.”

“And England!” exclaimed the girl, with her face kindling
gloriously; “and our mother England, must she perish by inches
in the tyrant's clutch, because we are cowards? No, Jasper,
no. Be of more constant mind. Tell me, what is it I
must do? and, though it wring my heart and rack my brain, if
I can save you and your gallant friends, and our dear native
land, I will save them, though it kill me.'

“Could you endure to part from me, Theresa — to part from
me for ever?

“To part from you, Jasper!” no written phrase can express
the agony, the anguish, the despair, which were made manifest
in every sound of those few, simple words. A breaking
heart spoke out in every accent.

“Ay, to part from me, never to see me more — never to hear
my voice; only to know that I exist, and that I love you — love
you beyond my own soul! Could you do this, Theresa, in the
hope of a meeting hereafter, where no tyranny should ever part
us any more?

“I know not — I know not!” she exclaimed, in a shrill,

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piercing tone, most unlike her usual soft, slow utterance. “Is this
the sacrifice you spoke of? Would this be called for at my
hands?”

“To part from me so utterly that it should not be known or
suspected that we had ever met — ever been wedded.”

“Why, Jasper,” she cried, starting, and gazing at him wildly,
“that were impossible; all the world knows that we have met—
that we have lived together here — that I am your wife.
What do you mean? Are you jesting with me? No, no!
God help me! that resolute, stern, dark expression. No, no,
no, no! Do not frown on me, Jasper; but keep me not in this
suspense — only tell me, Jasper.”

“The whole world — that is to say, the whole world of villagers
and peasants here, do know that we have met — that we
have lived together; but they do not know — nay, more, they do
not believe, that you are my wife, Theresa.”

“Not your wife — not your wife! What, in God's name,
then, do they believe me to be. But I am — I am — yes, before
God and man, I am your wife, Jasper St. Aubyn! That shame
will I never bear. The parish register will prove it.”

“Before God, dearest, most assuredly you are my wife; but
before man, I grieve to say, it is not so; nor will the register, to
which you appeal — as I did, when I first heard the scandal —
prove anything, but against you. It seems the rascal sexton
cut out the record of our marriage from the register, so soon as
the old rector died. He is gone, so that he can witness nothing.
Alderly and the sexton will not speak, for to do so would
implicate themselves in the guilt of having mutilated the church-register.
Alderly's mother is an idiot. We can prove nothing.”

“And when did you learn all this, Jasper?” she asked, calmly;
for a light, a fearful yet most clear illumination began to
dawn upon her mind.

“Last night. And I rode down this morning to the church,

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to inspect the register. It is as I was told; there is no trace
of the record which we signed, and saw witnessed, on its
pages.”

“And to what end should Verity and Alderly have done this
great crime needlessly?”

“Villains themselves, they fancied that I too was a villain;
and that, if not then, at some after time, I should desire to profit
by their villany, and should then be in their power.”

“Ha!” she said, still maintaining her perfect possession. “It
seems, at least, that their villany was wise, was prophetical.”

“Theresa!” his voice was stern, and harsh, and threatening—
his brow as black as midnight.

“Pardon me!” she said. “Pardon me, Jasper; but you
should make allowance for some feeling in a woman. I am,
then, looked upon as a lost, fallen wretch, as a disgrace to my
name and my sex, a concubine, a harlot — is it not so, Jasper?”

“Alas! alas! Theresa!”

“And you would have me? — speak!”

“I would not have you do it; God knows! it goes nigh to
break my heart to think of it — I only tell you what alone can
save us — ”

“I understand — it needs not to mince the matter; what is it,
then, can save us — save you, I should say rather, and your
friends?”

“That you should leave me, Theresa, and go where you
would, so it were not within a hundred miles of this place —
but better to France or Italy; all that wealth could procure you
should have; and my love would be yours above all things,
even although we never meet, until we meet in heaven.”

“Heaven, sir, is for the innocent and faithful, not for the liar
and the traitor! But how shall this avail anything to save you,
if I consent to do it? I must know, all; I must see all clearly,
before I act.”

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“Are you strong enough to bear what I shall say to you, my
poor Theresa?”

“Else had I not borne to hear what you have said to me.”

“It is the secretary of state, then, who has discovered our
plot. He is himself half inclined to join us; but he is a weak,
interested, selfish being, although of vast wealth, great influence,
and birth most noble. Now, he has a daughter — ”

“Ah!” the wretched girl started as if an ice-bolt had shot to
her very heart, “and you — you would wed her!”

“That is to say, he would have me wed her; and on that
condition joins our party. And so our lives, and England's liberties,
should be preserved by your glorious sacrifice.”

“I must think, then — I must think,” she answered, burying
her head in her hands, in truth, to conceal the agony of her
emotions, and to gain time, not for deliberation, but to compose
her mind and clear her voice for speech.

And he stood gazing on her, with the cold, cutting eye, the
calm, sarcastic, sneer, of a very Mephistopheles, believing that
she was about to yield, and inwardly mocking the very weakness
on which he had played, to his own base and cruel purposes.

But in a moment she arose and confronted him, pale, calm,
majestical, most lovely in her extremity of sorrow, but firm as
a hero or a martyr.

“And so,” she said, in a clear, cold, ringing voice, “this is
the sacrifice you ask of me? — to sever myself from you for
ever — to go forth into the great, cruel, cold world alone, with
a bleeding, broken heart, a blighted reputation, and a blasted
name? All this I might endure, perhaps I would — but you
have asked more of me, Jasper. You have asked me to
confess myself a thing infamous and vile — a polluted wretch—
not a wife, but a wanton! You have asked me, your own
wedded wife, to write myself down, with my own hand, a

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harlot, and to stand by and look on at your marriage with another—
as if I were the filthy thing you would name me. Than be
that thing, Jasper, I would rather die a hundred-fold; than call
myself that thing, being innocent of deed or thought of shame,
I had rather be it! Now, sir, are you answered? What, heap
the name of harlot on my mother's ashes! What, blacken my
dead father's stainless escutcheon! What — lie, before my
God, to brand myself, the first of an honest line, with the
strumpet's stain of blackness! Never! never! though thou and
I, and all the youth of England, were to die in tortures inconceivable;
never! though England were to perish unredeemed!
Now, sir, I ask you, are you answered?”

“I am,” he replied, perfectly unmoved, “I am answered,
Theresa, as I hoped, as I expected to be.”

“What do you mean? — did you not ask me to do this thing?”

“I did not, Theresa. I told you what sacrifice might save
us all. I did not ask you to make it. Nay, did I not tell you
that I would not even suffer you to make it?”

“But you told me — you told me — God help me, for I think
I shall go mad! Oh! tempt me no further, Jasper; try me no
further. Is — is this true, that you have told me?”

“Every word — every word of it, my own best love,” answered
the arch deceiver, “save only that I would not for my
life, nay, for my soul, have suffered you to make the sacrifice I
spoke of. Perish myself, my friends! perish England! nay,
perish the whole earth, rather!”

“Then why so tempt me? Why so sorely, so cruelly try
this poor heart, Jasper?”

“To learn if you were strong enough to share in my secrets—
and you shall share them. We must fly, Theresa; not from
Plymouth; not from any seaport, but from the wildest gorge in
the wild coast of Devon. I have hired a fishing-boat to await
us. We must ride forth alone, as if for a pleasure-party, across

[figure description] Page 321.[end figure description]

the hills, to-morrow, and so make our way to the place appointed.
If we escape, all shall be well — come the worst, as
you said, my own Theresa, at least we shall die together.”

“Are you in earnest, Jasper?”

“On my soul! by the God who hears me!”

“And you will take me with you; you will not cast me from
you; you will uphold me ever to be your own, your wedded
wife?”

“I will — I will. Not for the universe! not for my own
soul! would I lose you, my own, my own Theresa!”

And he clasped her to his bosom, in the fondest, closest embrace,
and kissed her beautiful lips eagerly, passionately. And
she, half fainting in his arms, could only murmur, in the revulsion
of her feelings, “Oh, happy! happy! too, too happy!”

Then he released her from his arms, and bade her go to bed,
for it was waxing late, and she would need a good night's rest
to strengthen her for the toils of to-morrow's journey.

And she smiled on him, and prayed him not to tarry long
ere he joined her; and retired, still agitated and nervous from
the long continuance of the dreadful mental conflict to which
he had subjected her.

But he, when she had left the room, turned almost instantly
as pale as ashes — brow, cheeks, nay, his very lips were white
and cold. The actor was exhausted by his own exertions.
The man shrunk from the task which was before him.

“The worse for her!” he muttered, through his hard-set
teeth, “the worse for her! the obstinate, vain, wilful fool! I
would, by Heaven! I would have saved her!”

Then he clasped his burning brow with the fingers of his
left hand, as if to compress its fierce, rapid beating, and strode
to and fro, through the narrow room, working the muscles of
his clinched right hand, as if he grasped the hilt of sword or
dagger.

[figure description] Page 322.[end figure description]

“There is no other way,” he said at length; “there is no
other way, and I must do it — must do it with my own hand.
But — can I — can I —?” he paused a moment, and resumed
his troubled walk. Then halted, and muttered in a deep voice,
“By hell! there is naught that a man can not do; and I — am I
not a man, and a right resolute, and stout one? It shall be so—
it is her fate! her fate! Did not her father speak of it that
night, as I lay weak and wounded on the bed? did I not dream
it thrice thereafter, in that same bed? though then I understood
it not. It shall be there — even there — where I saw it happen;
so shall it pass for accident. It is fate! — who can strive
against their fate?”

Again he was silent, and during that momentary pause a deep,
low, muttering roar was heard in the far distance — a breathless
hush — and again, that long, hollow, crashing roll, that tells of
elemental warfare.

Jasper's eyes flashed, and his whole face glared with a fearful
and half-frenzied illumination.

“It is,” he cried, “it is thunder! From point to point it is
true! It is her fate — her fate!”

And with the words, he rushed from the room; and within
ten minutes, was folded in the rapturous embrace of the snowy
arms of her, whose doom of death he had decreed already in
the secrets of his guilty soul.

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