"She always tumbles over the brooms worse than you did," Lettice explained, "so I give her a light on the stairs when I'm expecting her to supper. I'd have given you one, too, if I'd known you were coming."
She had banished Denis's smile. He shifted in his chair once more, but this time away from her. "Dot O'Connor!" he repeated for the third time, in that altered voice. "Do you mean Mrs. Trent?"
"She doesn't like being called that now."
"Do you see much of her?"
"So so," said Lettice. She had mentioned Dorothea, not to get away from Denis's chaff—that would have been too cruel—but of set purpose, because there was something she had to say before he went. "Will you stay and have supper with us? I think there'll be enough to go round, if you aren't too hungry."
"No, Lettice."
"I don't see why you shouldn't."
"Don't you?"
His tone was not encouraging, but it made not a pin's difference to Lettice; her difficulties came always from within, not from without, and once she had made up her mind to speak all the king's horses and all the king's men would not have stopped her. She did not imagine that she could move Denis, but there were certain things he ought to know, and which, in justice to Dorothea, she meant to set before him. They would not move him now, but he would not forget them; and in time to come they might sink in and soften his judgment.
"I don't see why you shouldn't forgive her," she pronounced.