“Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me, and I would hate to have you think I don’t appreciate it, from the way I acted.  I’ve come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never happen again, because it’s been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come back, some day, I hope you’ll see that you’ve got a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again.  I want to ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven’t any feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life.  I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a good deal happier—­and I know Roscoe would, too.  I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enought to excuse it this time.”

He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him, never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the agitation of her hands within the muff.

“All right,” he said at last.

She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.

“Thank you,” she said.  “There’s something else—­about something different—­I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it, too.”

“She’s up-stairs in her room,” said Sheridan.  “Roscoe—­”

Sibyl interrupted.  She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.

“No, let me go,” she said.  “I want to speak to her a minute first, anyway.”

And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see Bibbs enter his room and close the door.  Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of the circumstance.  Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the recollection there had flashed the thought—­out of her own experience—­that people are often much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by words directly addressed to them.  Sibyl intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear.  She did not hesitate—­her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to say.  Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the girl who had affronted her.

Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room.  The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband’s mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) “have a fit right there.”  She heard Sibyl’s step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her hair before a mirror.