The Thirteenth Tale question

I thought that was simply because the author wanted to give a kind of "Victorian literature ending realness" to the whole thing. In the beginning of the story, Margaret mentions that she dislikes what she sees as the vagueness of modern novels in giving informations about what became of the characters after the end of the story. Whereas in Victorian novels, the author generally let the readers know everything about what had happened to the characters, every detail.

So when Hester's initials were mentioned, the author had to add what the middle initial stood for, as if to say: even though this is modern novel, this is also clearly a hommage to the great Victorian writers :).