u?"

"Yes--if you promise to read every word of it."

Mrs. Presty promised (with a mental reservation), and opened the letter.

At the two first words, she stopped and began to clean her spectacles.
Had her own eyes deceived her? Or had Herbert Linley actually addressed
her daughter--after having been guilty of the cruelest wrong that a
husband can inflict on a wife--as "Dear Catherine"? Yes: there were the
words, when she put her spectacles on again. Was he in his right senses?
or had he written in a state of intoxication?

Mrs. Linley waited, with a preoccupied mind: she showed no signs of
impatience or surprise. As it presently appeared, she was not thinking
of the letter addressed to her by Herbert, but of the letter written by
Randal. "I want to look at it again." With that brief explanation she
turned at once to the closing lines which had offended her when she
first read them.

Mrs. Presty hazarded a guess at what was going on in her daughter's
mind. "Now your husband has written to you," she said, "are you
beginning to think Randal's opinion may be worth considering again?"
With her eyes still on Randal's letter, Mrs. Linley merely answered:
"Why don't you begin?" Mrs. Presty began as follows, leaving out the
familiarity of her son-in-law's address to his wife.

"I hope and trust you will forgive me for venturing to write to you,
in consideration of the subject of my letter. I have something to say
concerning our child. Although I have deserved the worst you can think
of me, I believe you will not deny that even your love for our little
Kitty (while we were living together) was not a truer love than mine.
Bad as I am, my heart has that tender place left in it still. I cannot
endure separation from my child."

Mrs. Linley rose to her feet. The first vague anticipations of future
atonement and reconciliation, suggested by her brother-in-law, no longer
existed in her mind: she foresaw but too plainly what was to come. "Read
faster," she said, "or let me read it for myself."

Mrs. Presty went on: "There is no wish, on my part, to pain you by any
needless allusion to my claims as a father. My one desire is to enter
into an arrangement which shall be as just toward you, as it is toward
me. I propose that Kitty shall live with her father one half of the
year, and shall return to her mother's care for the other half If there
is any valid objection to this, I confess I fail to see it."

Mrs. Linley could remain