For a few moments you stood watching the gathering storm, and then took a chair by the divan on which I lay.
“Are you too honorable,” you began,—and though I could not see your face in the darkness, your voice told me you were excited,—“to pardon dishonorable conduct in others? For I have come to beg of you forgiveness for a wrong.”
“Of me, Miss Walton?”
“Last April,” you went on, “Mrs. Blodgett brought me a book and asked me to read it. A few paragraphs revealed to me that it was something written by an old friend of mine. After reading a little further, I realized for the first time that I was violating a confidence. Yet though I knew this, and struggled to close the book, I could not, but read it to the end. Can you forgive me?”
“Oh, Miss Walton!” I protested. “Why ask forgiveness of me? What is your act compared to the wrong”—
“Hush, Don,” you said gently, and your use of my name, so long unheard, told me in a word that the feeling of our childhood days was come again. “Tell me you forgive me!” you entreated.
“I am not the one to forgive, Maizie.”
“I did wrong, and I ask your pardon,” you begged humbly. “Yet I’m not sorry in the least, and I should do it again,” you instantly added, laughing merrily at your own perverseness. Then in a moment you were serious again, saying, “I never received the letters or the photograph, Donald. My uncle confesses that he put them in the fire.” And before I could speak, a new thought seized you, for you continued sadly, “I shall never forgive myself for my harshness and cruelty when you were so ill.”
“That is nothing,” I replied, “since all our misunderstandings are gone. Why, even my debt, Maizie, ceases now to be a burden; in the future it will be only a joy to work.”
“Donald!” you exclaimed. “You don’t suppose I shall let you pay me another cent!”