“I don’t say that it is so in Rose’s case,” the ruthless old commentator added, “but lots of girls are better away from their mothers than with them, and lots of mothers better away from their girls. Children often enough would be the better if they were brought up by other people and not their parents. I’m sure I should have been. My mother and I were like Kilkenny cats most of the time.” * * * * * To my intense surprise, who should arrive the next day but Eustace, leading his little girl by the hand. I had expected to hear from him; but I had never thought to have him again under my roof. Vaguely I had guessed that he might associate me in some way with his wife’s action; unjustly, of course, but people are oftener unjust than not, and he was wounded to the quick and in no position to be too fair and reasonable. Besides, it was while Rose was visiting me that she had met Ronnie again, and it was the news of his return and illness in one of my letters to her that (I now saw) had determined her to come just at that time on a visit to her early home. I had touched an old chord and set it vibrating. All this Eustace, I thought, knew, and I was taking his resentfulness, however ill-founded, for granted. But how often we are in error in our notion of what other people are feeling! And how difficult it is to learn not to continue to make such mistakes! Eustace was harbouring no such grudge; he held me innocent; he even went so far as to wonder, when we were alone, if he himself might not somehow have been to blame. He could lay nothing specific to his charge; and yet. . . . But no, it could not be through fault of his own. Try as he might—and he had passed sleepless nights in reviewing the past—he could not recall ever having failed in any direction whatever in his duty as an affectionate and solicitous husband. The letter that Rose had left for him, he averred, when it came to essentials, said nothing. He did not show it to me but gave me the sense. It expressed sorrow at her failure to make him a worthy wife, regret at the collapse of their dream, and then said that she was sure that when he thought it all over he would understand, and, understanding, forgive. But if he could not forgive he would forget. “Forget!” Eustace exclaimed. How could he forget? How could he ever forget? The shame of it too. But he must not inflict his misery on me. That would be unfair, and I naturally had my own disappointment and grief to dispel.