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‘That will be right, Hester.’ Monica’s eyes were fixed on her daughter-in-law’s face.

‘Well, good-bye, then,’ said Hester. ‘You’ll come to-morrow, after that sleep, you know.’ She was turning away when Monica put out her hand and detained her. ‘Wait.—I want to say something first.—I want to ask you something.—Do you forgive me, Hester?’ she said.

Hester stared. ‘For what?’

‘For misjudging you. For traducing you—to your husband.’

‘Well, if you call it traducing when, as Clive said, half of it was true.’

‘Not the half I minded most; not the half he would have minded most.’

‘Well; no; I see.’ Hester gazed at her with a new attention. ‘But of course the other half, the old half;—having a lover, living with someone you’re not married to;—I suppose you really hate all that sort of thing as much as my father did.’

‘Not as he did. Certainly not as he did. I am not thinking of that. I can’t judge that. That’s over. It has nothing to do with me. I did traduce you.’

‘Well, that’s over, too; forgotten and forgiven,’ said Hester with her smile, strangely compounded now of bitterness and benignancy. ‘You must for-