And out of the painful conviction that so it was there grew another, and if possible a still more harrowing thought--the thought, namely, of the more than possibility which existed of a life-long separation (the consequence of her own impatience under what appeared to her now chastened spirit in the light of very minor grievances) from the husband whose excellence she was tardily beginning to value as it deserved. It was true that she had committed no act which must of necessity cause an eternal breach between them, and equally true was it that she had, previous to her departure, written a half-protesting, half-apologetic letter--_the_ letter of which the reader is already cognisant, and which (on such apparently trifling causes do the most important events of our lives depend) was not delivered at Pear-tree House till _after_ its owner’s fatal visit to London--it was true, I repeat, that Honor had written a letter which _might_, she felt, eventually soften John’s heart towards her. In it she had explained, as well as she was able--she could not abuse as heartily as she wished John’s mother to John himself--but in it she had not disguised the fact that the old lady’s unkindness was the sole motive cause of her departure; nor had she hesitated to assure the husband she was leaving that she might, under other circumstances, have lived happily beneath his roof. How keenly, as Honor strove to call to mind the only half-remembered expressions in that hastily-written epistle, did she regret that she had not endeavoured to fix them more firmly on her memory; for every syllable that she had written seemed to her of importance now, when wondering to herself what John was thinking of her, and whether or not she was beyond the reach of pardon.