"A penny for your thoughts," he said.

 

"Oh, Everard, I want you to do something," she returned, laying her hand on his arm.

 

"What is it, dearest?" he inquired.

 

"I feel so unhappy about Louis. I wish so much that you would write and say that we forgive him."

 

Everard was silent, and his face became very stern.

 

"If you would, I should be so glad."

 

"You ask too much," he said.

 

"Only what is right."

 

"Right perhaps, but hard--very hard."

 

"Oh, do," she pleaded, raising her blue eyes to his so earnestly. "Oh, Everard, it is not the way for us to be happy, to be unforgiving. I should be so miserable: day by day watching the blue waters, knowing that I had left any one in anger or ill-feeling. Oh, Everard, you will forgive him!"

 

She looked so lovely there in the moonlight, pleading for one who so little deserved it of her, that Everard found it hard to refuse her.

 

"I cannot write a lie, Isabel, even to please you," he replied, in a harsh, unnatural voice.

 

"Oh, no, not that; but I want you really to forgive him."

 

"I do not, I cannot," and his voice was hard and cold.

 

Isabel shuddered. Was this the Everard usually so kind and gentle?

 

"Oh, Everard, and you a clergyman!"

 

"Perhaps I am not fit to be one," he answered. "I have thought so sometimes lately, but I wished so much to be one that, in seeking to fulfil the wish, I may have overlooked the meetness."

 

"If you are not, I do not know who is," she said, "but this is not like yourself; I should be less surprised if I was unforgiving and you forgave."

 

"I hope that I do not often feel as I do now towards him. But you forget how nearly he took you from me; he whom I trusted and regarded with the warmest friendship."

 

"It is not for his sake I ask it Everard; forgive as you would be forgiven."

 

They walked on in silence until they reached the house. Then Everard said, "From my heart I wish I could, Isabel," and abruptly left her. Then, alone in his own room, after all had retired to rest, far into the night he fought the battle of good and evil. What was he about to do--preach and teach meekness, self-denial, and forgiveness of injuries, while he was still angry and unforgiving? What mockery! Ought he not to practice what he taught? Was theory--mere words--sufficient? No; he must, by example, give force to his teaching, or how could he hope to succeed? All this he saw clearly enough, but the difficulty still remained. He strove hard to conquer, but evil prevailed. "Forgive as you would be forgiven" rang continually in his ears, but he did not, could not, forgive. He laid down, but not to sleep, and the pale moon shone calmly and peacefully in upon him, as if mocking his disquietude. At length he threw the painful subject from him, and sank into an uneasy slumber.

 

He awoke, next morning, with the sun beaming brightly in at the window. But dark clouds gathered round him; gloomy doubts as to his fitness for the office he had taken, and sorrow at the impossibility of his forgiving Louis. "Forgive as you would be forgiven," and again the last night's struggle was renewed, and even when they started for the church he had not conquered.

 

Isabel saw how it was, and this was the bitter drop in her cup of happiness. Alas! in this world when is it unalloyed?

 

A burst of music filled the church as the bridal party entered, and very lovely looked the bride, surrounded by her three little bridesmaids, while in the background stood a fourth, the merry Lucy. Bob and three youthful Arlington cousins were groomsmen, and Everard, to use Lucy's own words, was the very beau ideal of what a bridegroom should be, in fact "perfect."

 

The sun shone with almost dazzling splendor on the gr............