"Miss Evelina!" cried the boy. "I have come to ask you to forgive my father!"
A silence fell between them, as cold and forbidding as Death itself.
After an interval which seemed an hour, Miss Evelina spoke.
"He never asked," she said. Her tone was icy, repellent.
"I know," answered Ralph, despairingly, "but I, his son, ask it. Anthony Dexter's son asks you to forgive Anthony Dexter—not to let him go to his grave unforgiven."
"He never asked," said Miss Evelina again, stubbornly.
"His need is all the greater for that," pleaded the boy, "and mine. Have you thought of my need of it? My name meant 'right' until my father changed its meaning. Don't you see that unless you forgive my father, I can never hold up my head again?"
What the Piper had said to Evelina came back to her now, eloquent with appeal;
The word is not made right. I'm thinking 't is wrong end to, as many things in this world are until we move and look at them from another way. It's giving for, that's all. When you have put self so wholly aside that you can he sorry for him because he has wronged you, why, then you have forgiven.
She moved about restlessly. It seemed to her that she could never be sorry for Anthony Dexter because he had wronged her; that she could never grow out of the hurt of her own wrong.
"Come with me," said Ralph, choking. "I know it's a hard thing I ask of you. God knows I haven't forgiven him myself, but I know I've got to, and you'll have to, too. Miss Evelina, you've got to forgive him, or I never can bear my disgrace."