“What can I do? What can I do?” she muttered; and then sat thinking till Eve, looking very pale and ill, walked softly into the room, and knelt by her side, turning up her sad face and red eyes to those of the troubled mother.
“Aunt, dear,” she whispered, “Dick has just come in, and gone up to his room. Shall we ask him to come down to us?”
“What for?” said Mrs Glaire sharply.
“Don’t you think, Aunt, we ought to try and forgive him, and win him back?”
Mrs Glaire rose slowly, and went to a side table, from which she took a Prayer-book, and read from it the sentence beginning, “I will arise,” to the end; and then, laying down the book, she took Eve’s head between her hands, and kissed her white forehead gently.
“Eve, my child, yes, we ought to try and forgive him; I, for his cruel deceit of the woman who gave him birth; you, for his outrage against the woman who was to be his wife. I will forgive him, but he must come—he must arise and come, and seek for pardon first. While you—”
“Oh, Aunt, Aunt,” moaned Eve, hiding her face in the elder’s breast, “I never knew before how much I loved him.”
“And you forgive him, child?”
“Yes, Aunt, I forgive,” said Eve, raising her head, and looking sadly in the elder woman’s face, “I forgive him, but—”
“But what, my child?”