She looked so lovely there in the moonlight, pleading for one who so little deserved it of her, that Everard found it hard to refuse her.
"I cannot write a lie, Isabel, even to please you," he replied, in a harsh, unnatural voice.
"Oh, no, not that; but I want you really to forgive him."
"I do not, I cannot," and his voice was hard and cold.
Isabel shuddered. Was this the Everard usually so kind and gentle?
"Oh, Everard, and you a clergyman!"
"Perhaps I am not fit to be one," he answered. "I have thought so sometimes lately, but I wished so much to be one that, in seeking to fulfil the wish, I may have overlooked the meetness."
"If you are not, I do not know who is," she said, "but this is not like yourself; I should be less surprised if I was unforgiving and you forgave."
"I hope that I do not often feel as I do now towards him. But you forget how nearly he took you from me; he whom I trusted and regarded with the warmest friendship."
"It is not for his sake I ask it Everard; forgive as you would be forgiven."