there. At any rate, they were
bound, much as his father had been bound to her before, by the logic of
events.

He went uphill, scarcely knowing how he made his way. Miss Evelina,
veiled, as usual, opened the door for him. Ralph stumbled across the
threshold, crying out:

"My father is dead! He died by his own hand!"

"Yes," returned Miss Evelina, quietly. "I have heard. I am
sorry--for you."

"You need not be," flashed Ralph, quickly. "It is for us, my father
and I, to be sorry for you--to make amends, if any amends can be made
by the living or the dead."

Miss Evelina started. He knew, then? And it had not been necessary
for her to draw out the sheathed dagger which only yesterday she had
held in her hand. The glittering vengeance had gone home, through no
direct agency of hers.

"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."

She let him lead her out of the house. On the long way to Anthony
Dexter's, no w