Now that her recovery was assured, Mrs. Maynard was very forgiving and sweet and kind with every one. The ladies who came in to talk with her said that she was a changed creature; she gave them all the best advice, and she had absolutely no shame whatever for the inconsistency involved by her reconciliation with her husband. She rather flaunted the happiness of her reunion in the face of the public, and she vouchsafed an explanation to no one. There had never been anything definite in her charges against him, even to Grace, and her tacit withdrawal of them succeeded perfectly well. The ladies, after some cynical tittering, forgot them, and rejoiced in the spectacle of conjugal harmony afforded them: women are generous creatures, and there is hardly any offence which they are not willing another woman should forgive her husband, when once they have said that they do not see how she could ever forgive him. Mrs. Maynard’s silence seemed insufficient to none but Mrs. Breen and her own husband. The former vigorously denounced its want of logic to Grace as all but criminal, though she had no objection to Mr. Maynard. He, in fact, treated her with a filial respect which went far to efface her preconceptions; and he did what he could to retrieve himself from the disgrace of a separation in Grace’s eyes. Perhaps he thought that the late situation was known to her alone, when he casually suggested, one day, that Mrs. Maynard was peculiar. “Yes,” said Grace mercifully; “but she has been out of health so long. That makes a great difference. She’s going to be better now.” “Oh, it’s going to come out all right in the end,” he said, with his unbuoyant hopefulness, “and I reckon I’ve got to help it along. Why, I suppose every man’s a trial at times, doctor?” “I dare say. I know that every woman is,” said the girl. “Is that so? Well, may be you’re partly right. But you don’t suppose but what a man generally begins it, do you? There was Adam, you know. He didn’t pull the apple; but he fell off into that sleep, and woke up with one of his ribs dislocated, and that’s what _really_ commenced the trouble. If it hadn’t been for Adam, there wouldn’t have been any woman, you know; and you couldn’t blame her for what happened after she got going?” There was no gleam of insinuation in his melancholy eye, and Grace listened without quite knowing what to make of it all. “And then I suppose he wasn’t punctual at meals, and stood round talking politics at night, when he ought to have been at home with his family?” “Who?” asked Grace.