‘There is a word I must speak,’ pursued Jessica. ‘If you will not heed it now, it will remain in your memory, and bear fruit at the appointed time. I alone know of the sin which poisons your soul, and the experiences through which I have passed justify me in calling you to repentance.’ Nancy raised her hand. ‘Stop! That is quite enough. Perhaps you are behaving conscientiously; I will try to believe it. But not another word, or I shall speak as I don’t wish to.’ ‘It is enough. You know very well what I refer to. Don’t imagine that because you are now a married woman--’ Nancy stepped to the door, and threw it open. ‘Leave the house,’ she said, in an unsteady tone. ‘You said you were unwelcome, and it was true. Take yourself out of my sight!’ Jessica put her head back, murmured some inaudible words, and with a smile of rancorous compassion went forth into the rain. On recovering from the excitement of this scene, Nancy regretted her severity; the poor girl in the hideous bonnet had fallen very low, and her state of mind called for forbearance. The treachery for which Jessica sought pardon was easy to forgive; not so, however, the impertinent rebuke, which struck at a weak place in Nancy’s conscience. Just when the course of time and favour of circumstances seemed to have completely healed that old wound, Jessica, with her crazy malice grotesquely disguised, came to revive the half-forgotten pangs, the shame and the doubt that had seemed to be things gone by. It would have become her, Nancy felt, to treat her hapless friend of years ago in a spirit of gentle tolerance; that she could not do so proved her--and she recognised the fact--still immature, still a backward pupil in the school of life.--‘And in the Jubilee year I thought myself a decidedly accomplished person!’ Never mind. Her husband would come this evening. Of him she could learn without humiliation. His arrival was later than of wont. Only at eleven o’clock, when with disappointment she had laid aside her book to go to bed, did Tarrant’s rap sound on the window. ‘I had given you up,’ said Nancy. ‘Yet you are quite good-tempered.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘It is the pleasant custom of wives to make a husband uncomfortable if he comes late.’ ‘Then I am no true wife!’ laughed Nancy. ‘Something much better,’ Tarrant muttered, as he threw off his overcoat. He began to talk of ordinary affairs, and nearly half-an-hour elapsed before any mention was made of the event that had bettered their prospects. Nancy looked over a piece of his writing in an evening paper which he had brought; but she could not read it with attention. The paper fell to her lap, and she sat silent. Clearly, Tarrant would not be the first to speak of what was in both their minds. The clock ticked; the rain pattered without; the journalist smoked his pipe and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. ‘Are you sorry,’ Nancy asked, ‘that I am no longer penniless?’