"Hush, Eva, hush," said Mrs. Kenyon, taking her little daughter by the hand. "You don't understand that I'm crying because I'm glad—gladder than I've been for many a year, so glad that it makes me cry; and all because my brother, your Uncle Tom, has come to see me; and how he got here and how he has found me out remains yet to tell. Come in, come in, my Tom. Let us get into the shelter of the house and let me look at you and make quite sure that it is in very deed my brother Tom who talks to me. But your voice rings true, your dear, kind voice that I had thought never to hear again."
She struggled to the seat in the verandah and pulled him down beside, gazing into his face with hungry eyes. It was bliss enough to look at him after the long lapse of years, to hold his hand between her own, which would hardly cover one of his.
"You always had such big hands, Tom, such big, kind hands that seem to carry help and consolation in their very touch. Oh, how I've wanted you sometimes since—he died."
She did not name her husband, but Tom knew well enough she referred to the father little Eva could not remember.
"But you could have had me for the asking," he said gently.
"I know, I know, but pride would not let me. How could I appeal to you for help when father and Walter—that elder brother of mine—told me that in marrying George I made my final choice between them and him? And you were away, away in Canada, and George just about to return to the colony. We were madly in love, he and I, so I married him and came out with him. I don't say life was easy, Tom; I don't know whether I did right or wrong in marrying George, but I do know this—that from that day to this I never regretted it. He was the dearest and best of men, and we were devoted to each other. I own that when he got ill he suffered agonies of self-reproach in having allowed me to come out with him, but if I had life over again I should have chosen him before all living men. You see father had decided on another match. George, as he lay dying, tried to make me promise to go home, but I told him I never would do it, that I was strong enough and young enough to support myself and the child."
"Young enough, but scarcely strong enough, I take it," said Tom, slipping his arm round the slight frame.
She crept up closer to him. "I don't feel young," she said. "The buffeting of life has made me feel old and cold. If I could forgive father the part he played——"
"Ah, hush," said her brother, "surely you will forgive him, as God will forgive us all. Father died a few months ago."
Clarissa drew herself away, stiffening into stony silence, her hands folded in her lap. Dead! her father dead, and she not a moment since speaking angry, unforgiving words of one who had passed into the presence of the Great White Throne! It was forgiveness for herself that she craved for now, forgiveness for all the hard thoughts she had harboured against him since they parted in such hot anger, forgiveness that in her pride she had made no effort to break through the barrier of silence built up between them. Never a line had she either written to home or received from it since that hasty flight of between six and seven years ago.