A decade or two earlier she would have turned to religion, inevitably to that most attractive and logical form, the religion expounded by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.

She would have confessed her past, slightly or very considerably _gazee_, to some indulgent confessor, have been pardoned, and have presented a handsome sum to an ecclesiastical charity or work of piety.

But she had survived into a skeptical age and she had conceived an immense respect for her clever daughter.

Vivie should be her spiritual director; and Vivie's idea put before her at their reconciliation three years previously had seemed the most practical way of making amends to Woman for having made money in the past out of the economic and physiological weakness of women.

She had fined herself Ten Thousand pounds then; and out of her remaining capital of Fifty or Sixty thousand (all willed with what else she possessed to her daughter) she would pay over more if Vivie demanded it as further reparation.