Will you ask it?"
"I have not asked for your money, sir," said Vesta. "Yet I have heard of
Love doing as much as that, relieving the anguish of its object, and
finding sufficient joy in the self-denying deed."
"I do not think you personally know of any such case, though you may
have read it in a novel or tract. Men have died, and left a fortune they
could no longer keep, to some cherished lady; or they have made a
considerable sacrifice for a beautiful and noble woman; but where did
you ever hear, Miss Vesta, of a famished lover, surrendering every
endowment that might win the peerless one, to be himself returned to his
sorrow, tortured still by love, and by his neighbors ridiculed? What
would Princess Anne say of me? That I had been made a fool of, and hurl
new epithets after my hat?"
Vesta searched her mind, thinking she must alight upon some such example
there, but none suited the case. Meshach took advantage of her silence:
"The gifts of a lover are everywhere steps to love, as I have
understood. He makes his impression with them; they are expected.
Nothing creates happiness like a gift, and it is an old saying that
blessings await him who gives, and also her who takes, and that to seek
and ask and knock are praiseworthy."
"Oh," said Vesta, "but to be _bought_, Mr. Milburn? To be weighed
against a father's debts--is it not degrading?"
"Not where such respect and cherishing as mine will be.
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