Definition of "forbearance"

Though I would give no information, he discovered, through some of the other servants, both her place of residence, and the existence of the child. Still he didn’t molest her; for which forbearance she might thank his aversion, I suppose.

1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter III, in Wuthering Heights, volume II, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], pages 63–64

I WOULD HAVE been nine or ten when my mother chased me up a thorn tree with a ceremonial hippo-hide whip. What my crime was, I forget. My mother was, and remains, a woman of exceptional forbearance. I must have done something so obnoxious as to beggar belief.

2010 August 3, David Bennun, Tick Bite Fever‎, Random House, page 109