At first she thought that she would not answer the letter at all.  What was it to her?  Let them fight their own lovers’ battles out after their own childish fashion.  If the man meant at last to be honest, there could be no doubt, Mrs Hurtle thought, that the girl would go to him.  It would require no interference of hers.  But after a while she thought that she might as well see this English chit who had superseded herself in the affections of the Englishman she had condescended to love.  And if it were the case that all revenge was to be abandoned, that no punishment was to be exacted in return for all the injury that had been done, why should she not say a kind word so as to smooth away the existing difficulties?  Wild cat...