But always, when she had dared to speak of forgiveness, the old wound seemed to bleed afresh. And now she felt the old fever was burning in his heart as fiercely as ever.
Once more that night she pleaded voicelessly with the compassionate Lord.
"Thou knowest, O merciful One," she said in the depths of her heart, "it is not his blindness he cannot forgive; it is our poverty and the child's. It is not his wrong he would have avenged; it is ours. If there is hatred in his heart, love is beneath the hate, Thou knowest. Forgive, oh, forgive him! even if he cannot quite forgive."
And then, in her tearful prayers, she pleaded the day when Baron Ivo himself had come to their hut, pursued by some of the many who had been turned into beggars, or robbers, by his high-handed tyranny; when, not seeing Bruno, Bruno had recognized him by his voice, and, nevertheless, had spared him, and suffered her to hide him from his pursuers, and suffered the child Hilda to quench his thirst with fresh water from the spring.
"He could have, avenged himself then," she pleaded. "And, instead, he saved. Is not that forgiving? Will not that cup of cold water be remembered by Thee?"
Yet her heart was tossed by anxiety and doubt. Could it be forgiving to wish evil? And could the unforgiving be forgiven?
That night Bruno also lay awake, and he answered her thoughts, and said reproachfully to her,—
"Wilt thou, even thou, be hard on me? Forgiveness is Divine; but vengeance also is Divine. The Judge is just, or we could not trust Him. If it were a slave, if it were a dog that had been so wronged, must I not rejoice the wrong-doer should be punished?"
"Thou art wiser than I, my beloved," she said. "I have no wisdom but His face and His words. 'Father, forgive them,' He said; and with Him forgiveness meant Paradise to the forgiven. Else where were we?"
And they said no more.