Will you let me read it to you ?" "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.