Had Miss Dempsey been someone else, someone whose good opinion she was not so eager to acquire she might have taken the confession as a slight but in this instance she was entirely blind to it. In fairness, she had gotten a faint impression that Miss Dempsey cared little for her and she'd reasoned that it was likely because of how little they had in common but it seemed now that they had both been mistaken in each other. Her own opinion of Miss Dempsey had hardly been without its cynicism, albeit it intertwined with a perverse sort of envy of her.

Nova found it quite easy to be oblivious to the barb in Miss Dempsey's words when she was enraptured by the subsequent compliment. "There is nothing to forgive." She was all restrained little smiles and blushes. "I cannot claim innocence either." She didn't want to extrapolate further than that. It was one thing to judge someone for what they hadn't observed, another to judge someone on what they had.

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