Her victoria had already stopped at her door, and the footman had turned back the fur rug that covered her knees to let her get out; but she sat for a moment quite still, for the significance of her letter (or its insignificance) had struck her like a blow. Till she saw it in connection with her decision she had not known how nearly she had decided. She had told her husband, and that with sincerity, that the past was wiped out; all that he had said or done which had been unjust or insulting to her she had cancelled, annihilated, as far as it concerned her. Was she, then, going to make a fresh past, so to speak, on her own account, to give him an opportunity to be as generous as she had been? There was a dreadful ironical fitness about it: the conjunction of these things was brutally apt. Yet she had forgiven him, and that forgiveness was far more real to her than that which was labelled sin. That did not signify anything very particular to her, but to do this thing behind the screen of her forgiveness seemed mean, and meanness was an impossible quality. She had forgiven Thurso on the big scale, and the very bigness of her nature, which enabled her to do that, made her hatred of meanness strong also. And as she got out, she asked herself whether, if the letter which she had written to Thurso was still unposted, she would let it go or tear it up. And she knew that, though she might stand with it in her hand for a little, she would still send it. She meant what she had said in it. * * * * * There were some half-dozen of letters for her on the table in the hall, and a telegram lay a little apart. As she picked these up, she spoke to the footman. "I shall be in to anybody till six," she said; "but to nobody after that except Count Villars." She had half opened the telegram when her eye fell on two little hats and coats hung up on a rack at the end of the hall. She looked at them a moment, feeling that they ought to convey something to her, but she did not know what. Then she remembered that the two eldest boys were home from school to-day for the holidays. "Lord Raynham and Master Henry have come?" she asked. "Yes, my lady: they arrived an hour ago." Again she paused. Whatever she said or did to-day seemed to be laden with significance, trivial though it appeared. "Let them know I have come in," she said. "They will come and have tea with me in the drawing-room in ten minutes." (What was it children liked with their tea?) "And a boiled egg for them both," she added. * * * * *