"Forgive him," said Rachel, kneeling beside the coffin. "My friend, forgive him. He has injured you, I know. And your just revenge--for you thought it just--has failed to reach him. But the time for vengeance has passed. The time for forgiveness has come. Forgive my poor Hugh, who will never forgive himself. Do you not see now, you who see so much, that it was harder for him than for you; that it would have been the easier part for him if he had been the one to draw death, to have atoned to you for his sin against you by his death, instead of feeling, as he always must, that your stroke failed, and that he has taken your life from you as well as your honor. Forgive him," said Rachel, over and over again. But the unheeding face looked earnestly into the future. It had done with the past. "Ah!" said Rachel, "if I who love him can forgive him, cannot you, who only hated him, forgive him, too? For love is greater than hate." She covered the face and went out. CHAPTER XXXVII Le nombre des etres qui veulent voir vrai est extraordinairement petit. Ce qui domineles hommes, c'est la peur de la verite, a moins que la verite ne leur soit utile.--AMIEL. Lady Newhaven insisted on attending the funeral, a little boy in either hand. Rachel had implored that she would spare the children, knowing how annoyed their father would have been, but Lady Newhaven was obdurate. "No," she said. "He may not have cared much about them, but that is no reason why they should forget he is their father." So Teddy and Pauly stared with round eyes at the crowd, and at the coffin, and the wealth of flowers, and the deep grave in which their old friend and play-fellow was laid. Perhaps they did not understand. They did not cry. "They are like their father. They have not much heart," Lady Newhaven said to Rachel. Dick, who was at the funeral, looked at them, winking his hawk eyes a little, and afterwards he came back boldly to the silent house, and obtained leave to take them away for the afternoon. He brought them back towards bed-time, with a dancing doll he had made for them, and a man's face cut out of cork. They met Rachel and the governess in the garden on their return, and flew to them with their trophies. Dick waited a moment after the others had gone in. "It seems hard on him to have left it all," he said. "His wife and the little chaps, and his nice home and everything." Rachel could say nothing. "He was very fond of the boys," he went on. "He would have done anything for them." "He did what he could," said Rachel, almost inaudibly, and then added: "He was very fond of you." "He was a good friend," said Dick, his crooked mouth twitching a little, "and a good enemy. That was why I liked him. He was hard to make a friend of or an enemy, but when he once did either he never let go." Rachel shivered. The frost was settling white upon the grass. "I must go in," she said, holding out her hand.