She blew out her candle and went back with him into the library. Then she sat down in Matthew's great leathern chair and watched him as he stirred the fire. Much of her bitter resentment against him had died by the old man's death-bed. The common sorrow had brought them once more on to the plane of old relations. The sudden change in his attitude had helped the promptings of her nobler nature, and generously she had given him the dumbly craved sympathy. Besides, the old man's tenderness was too fresh a memory for her to be harsh now to Sylvester. The fire burst into a blaze. Sylvester drew himself up and stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, and all the hardness had gone from his face. Suddenly he spoke. “I am a poor creature, Ella. I know it now. You have every right to think ill of me; but try to think as well as you can--for the old man's sake.” “The last few days have changed so much,” she answered. “Could they bring you to forgive me for all the pain and suffering I have caused you?” She drew a little sharp breath. “We need never speak of that again. It is behind us.” “But it is beginning to be very present with me,” he answered gravely. “Lately my eyes have been opened to many things. Some day I may find it in my power to tell you how. I have wronged you cruelly and unjustly. I would give much to make atonement--but one can never atone. One can only crave forgiveness--and pity for a blind man. I feel I can ask it of you now. Since you have been here you too have shown me things I never knew of. For nearly two years I have given you every reason to hate me. You have put all aside, treated me with a sister's gentleness, given me all your sympathy and tenderness. I am not accustomed to perceive large and generous natures.... I will make a confession. In my morbid arrogance and folly, I put myself upon a pedestal and regarded you, God forgive me, as something beneath me. You are as far above me as he whom we buried today. I had to tell you.” For a few moments she could not find words to reply. She had never known him to humble himself like this. It was hard to reconcile him with the grim, pitiless man who had sat opposite her on that nightmare journey from London. “I did hate you--bitterly,” she said at last. “I don't think I do so now. It is easy to say 'I forgive you,' but I don't quite know what it implies. As for one of us being higher than the other, you are a great physician, and I am just an ignorant girl with a miserable set of unregulated emotions--” “You should thank God for them,” he interrupted. “They haven't brought me much happiness,” she said, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “See, I am frank! No, I won't say I forgive, but I'll think kindly of you, Syl, I promise.” “It is all I dare hope for,” he said. And so the enmity came to an end.