“Miss Shepard!” Young O’Donovan fairly gasped.
“John,” she went on, and she seemed to him like the pictures of saints in the church, as she stood in her white gown in the silvery light, “if your scheme had succeeded, you would not only have destroyed most valuable property of mine; you would have killed two of my dearest friends; but you have turned over a new leaf. I feel sure that nothing will ever induce you to consent to anything of the kind again.”
“Never, so help me Heaven!” he exclaimed, fervently.
“Now, you have confessed like a man, I will forgive like a woman. You will accept the new place. You will go on studying and improving yourself, and some day I shall be proud of you, and you will be proud that you once had the manliness to come to me and confess a crime. Now, we will bury the thing forever, and never speak of it again. Only promise me you will go to Mr. Villard in the morning and do as I ask you.”
“I promise,” said the young man solemnly. Then he dropped on his knees and seizing her hand, bent his head reverently upon it.
“If the God in Heaven above is like you,” he said, “He is a God worth serving.”
“My poor forgiveness resembles His, John, only as a drop of rain resembles the mighty ocean.”
They walked silently home, and O’Donovan left her with a new purpose in his heart that has never left it since. He is to-day a thriving Christian gentleman. Dare any one say it would have been better to condemn him as a law-breaker?
“Nobody but a woman, I suppose, would have dealt justice so,” said Salome to herself, as she put out her light an hour later, and turned to the window—“nobody but John Villard.”