“I know all that,” said Lady Frances.
“I went to Jasper, and Jasper took me to The Priory—to Sylvia’s home. Jasper has been staying in the house with Sylvia for a long time, and I went to Sylvia and to Jasper, and I hid there. Audrey came yesterday morning and told me what had happened; and, oh! I thought my heart would break. But Uncle Edward has forgiven me.”
“What! Have you dared to see him?”
“The doctor gave me leave. I stayed with him half last night, until you came at two o’clock; and I told Uncle Edward, and he smiled. He has forgiven me. Oh! I love him better than any one in all the world; I could just die for him. And, Aunt Frances, I did tear the book, and I did behave shockingly at school; and I will go straight to Miss Henderson and tell her, and I will do everything—everything you wish, if only you will let me stay in the house with Uncle Edward. For somehow—somehow,” continued Evelyn in a whisper, her voice turning husky and almost dying away, “I think Uncle Edward has made religion and God possible to me.”
As Evelyn said the last words she staggered against the table, deadly white. She put one hand on a chair to steady herself, and looked up with pathetic eyes at her aunt.
What was there in that scared, bewildered, and yet resolved face which for the first time since she had seen it touched Lady Frances?
“Evelyn,” she said, “you ask me to forgive you. What you have said has shocked me very much, but your manner of saying it has opened my eyes. If you have done wrong, doubtless I am not blameless I never showed you——”
“Neither sympathy nor understanding,” said Evelyn. “I might have been different had you been different. But please—please, do anything with me now—anything—only let me stay for Uncle Edward’s sake.”
Lady Frances sat down.
“I am a mother,” she said, “and I am not without feeling, and not without sympathy, and not without understanding.”