'MY DEAREST LUCY,--Until I met Mr. Prendergast yesterday, I was not sure that you had actually returned, or I would not have delayed an hour in assuring you, if you could doubt it, that my pardon is ever ready for you.' ('Many thanks,' was the muttered comment. 'Oh that poor, dear, stupid man! would that I had stopped his mouth!') 'I never doubted that your refinement and sense of propriety would be revolted at the consequences of what I always saw to be mere thoughtlessness--' ('Dearly beloved of an old maid is, I told you so!') '--but I am delighted to hear that my dear child showed so much true delicacy and dignity in her trying predicament--' ('Delighted to find her dear child not absolutely lost to decorum! Thanks again.') '--and I console myself for the pain it has given by the trust that experience has proved a better teacher than precept.' ('Where did she find that grand sentence?') 'So that good may result from past evil and present suffering, and that you may have learnt to distrust those who would lead you to disregard the dictates of your own better sense.' ('Meaning her own self!') 'I have said all this by letter that we may cast aside all that is painful when we meet, and only to feel that I am welcoming my child, doubly dear, because she comes owning her error.' ('I dare say! We like to be magnanimous, don't we? Oh, Mr. Prendergast, I could beat you!') 'Our first kiss shall seal your pardon, dearest, and not a word shall pass to remind you of this distressing page in your history.' ('Distressing! Excellent fun it was. I shall make her hear my diary, if I persuade myself to encounter this intolerable kiss of peace. It will be a mercy if I don't serve her as the thief in the fable did his mother when he was going to be hanged.') 'I will meet you at the station by any train on Saturday that you like to appoint, and early next week we will go down to what I am sure you have felt is your only true home.' ('Have I? Oh! she has heard of their journey, and thinks this my only alternative. As if I could not go with them if I chose--I wish they would ask me, though. They shall! I'll not be driven up to the Holt as my last resource, and live there under a system of mild browbeating, because I can't help it. No, no! Robin shall find it takes a vast deal of persuasion to bend me to swallow so much pardon in milk and water. I wonder if there's time to change the spooney simplicity, and come out in something spicy, with a dash of the Bloomer. But, maybe, there's some news of him in the other sheet, now she has delivered her conscience of her rigmarole. Oh! here it is--')