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TRAXELBY

BOOK I

Wednesday, September 5, 1906.

What on earth is the matter with Susan? Up to yesterday morning I have hardly had to find fault with her more than twice or thrice in four years. Yet, since last night, she has richly deserved a dozen sharp scoldings at the very least.

After all, poor Grandmamma must have been right. "My pet," grannie used to say whenever I told her that Susan was a treasure of pure gold; "My pet, I have had thirty or forty treasures myself, and I give you my word that even the best of them are only plated. Off the worst ones the plating wears soon. Off the better ones it wears late. But wait long enough, and sooner or later you shall see the copper or the pewter."

No doubt I ought to be grateful that Susan has lasted so well. All the same, it is maddening that the gilding should choose to come off just as I'm on the eve of starting for Sainte Véronique-sur-mer. Susan says everything is packed: but I can't risk it. Probably she has filled a trunk with opera-glasses and fans, and forgotten towels and soap. First thing in the morning she must unpack, and we must both go through everything with a list. But it's tiresome beyond words.

Thursday, September 6.

Susan is worse than ever. Instead of toast, she brought me this morning two chunks of bread hardly browned, and, instead of tea, a tepid potion as black as night. I have asked her if she is ill, but she says she isn't. And, certainly, I never saw her look better in her life. The worst of it is that she keeps coming and going with such an air of--how shall I describe it? Not insolence: not even indifference. It is hard to find the word. When I blame her for some blunder, she looks, for the moment, duly meek and sorry; and when I send her off on some errand she departs as if she really wants to do her best in her old way. And in less than half an hour I am scolding her again.

On one point I've made up my mind. No starting for Sainte Véronique till Susan's either mended or ended. I'll wire Dupoirier not to expect us till Monday. Gibson shall take the telegram to the village at once. And, if there's no change for the better before post-time to-night, I'll write to Alice and borrow that pale little slip of a French maid of hers for the time I shall be in Sainte Véronique. Alice said something last week about sending her back to France for a change. Perhaps I'll take Susan too. Or perhaps I'll let her go to her friends till I come home again. She's been too good a girl all these years for me to part with her just because of what may be no more than a passing slackness and staleness. Besides, Susan is the only creature I really like to have about me. She is as wholesome and sweet as country cream and rosy-cheeked apples.

The word I couldn't think of has flashed upon me all of a sudden. It's a simple enough word and an obvious; and it would have come to me at once if I had had the grace to remember sooner that Susan, after all, is a human being.

Susan is merely preoccupied. I ought to have divined it hours ago, if I hadn't been so disgustingly devoted to my own right worshipful ease and comfort. I've never thought about it before: but, without doubt, Susan's cousins and uncles and aunts are as much to Susan as my own cousins and uncles and aunts are to me. Indeed, I hope and expect that they are vastly more. I wonder what is wrong? Is Susan's cousin going to be married? Or has her aunt joined the Salvation Army? Or has her uncle tumbled off a hayrick? Perhaps it's something far worse. Anyhow, the poor soul must think me adorably sympathetic when I reward her admirable reticence by shrewing her for every insignificant lapse. And, after the loving fidelity with which she has served me and cherished me so much over and above the best-paid hireling's duty, she must find me most consolingly grateful.

I will make her tell me. Probably it is something wherein I can give a bit of practical help.

Later.

I've tackled Susan.

She didn't make it too easy. While she was brushing my hair, I said abruptly, but quite cordially:

"By the way, Susan, I sha'n't go to Sainte Véronique to-night. Gibson's gone to the village with a telegram. I've told Monsieur Dupoirier to meet me on Monday."

By peeping through my hair I could see Susan's face in the glass, although she couldn't see mine.

"Very well, Miss Gertrude," Susan answered.

She called me "Miss Gertrude" in precisely the tone she has always used ever since she first came to Traxelby, before Alice was married and when Grandmamma was still alive; and she went on brushing my hair without a pause. But I noticed that her cheeks, reflected in the glass, first paled and then flamed. I flung my hair from my eyes and looked up at Susan without ado.

"Susan," I said, "you are unhappy about something. You ought to have told me. Perhaps I could have helped you. In any case I would have been less exacting in my wants and less sharp in my complaints."

"Thank you, Miss," said Susan unsarcastically and thankfully. But she only went on brushing my hair.

"You are unhappy?" I asked again.

"Oh, no, Miss, no," Susan answered quickly and warmly. And she brushed my hair harder than ever.

Looking at her once more in the glass, I saw that she was speaking the truth. Her face was still the playground of contending emotions, but, through her pretty, blue eyes, her spirit gazed out radiantly at the genial tourney. Altogether, Susan looked bewitching. In her country print, and with her yellow hair and rosy-red cheeks, she was just the sort of sweet, shy, rustic English beauty to fall head over ears in love with at first sight. The truth blazed upon me like a flash of lightning.

It was a few moments before I found my tongue. That some young man or other should begin to plague my bright-eyed Susan was the most natural thing in the world; and yet I had no more taken such a thing into my calculations than I had speculated as to what I should do if a burglar broke in by night and walked off with my silver combs and brushes. At last I said, rather lamely and stiffly:

"At any rate, Susan, you've got something on your mind."

Susan did not reply.

"What is it?" I asked. "Or rather, who is it?"

Susan's breath came and went more quickly. But still she did not answer.

I turned over the possibilities in my mind, and then put a question pointblank.

"Is it Gibson?"

"Oh, no, Miss, not Gibson." Her response was prompt, decisive, almost reproachful.

"I'm rather sorry," I said. "Gibson's a thoroughly decent, steady young fellow, and he will get on. I hope it's nobody worse than Gibson."

"Oh, no, Miss," said Susan swiftly and softly, "Not worse than Gibson."

As she did not offer the swain's name, or an account of his person, or any further information whatsoever, I sat dumb and began to feel a bit sulky. Apart from my personal loss of the best maid a woman ever had, I was aggrieved on Susan's own account. No doubt some small farmer's son had turned her silly little head and won her unguarded little heart. And after the rude delights of a rural courtship, my neat-handed, dainty pink-and-white Susan would have to settle down for forty years to drudge among kine and swine and turnips, and, most likely, a pack of lusty and highly dislikable children. The prospect so revolted me that I decided to do my whole duty.

"Susan."

"Yes, Miss?"

"Have you told your people--your relations--about all this?"

"No, Miss."

"Why not?"

"There's only my aunt, Miss," said Susan dutifully, "and she doesn't care. I've wrote----"

"Written. Not wrote. Say written."

"Yes, Miss. I've written to her twice since Christmas, not to speak of sending a coloured post-card from Malvern, and she hasn't answered never so much as a word."

This pricked me. I had heard it before; and, knowing as I did that Susan had neither father nor mother, nor brother nor sister, I ought to have put two and two together, and deduced the fact that Susan was alone in the world. But I had not been interested or unselfish enough to work it out.

"Of course, of course," I said. "I'd forgotten. But, Susan, why have you not spoken about it to me? When I found you had no parents, didn't I tell you that if you were in any doubt or trouble you were always to come to me?"

"Yes, Miss," answered Susan as dutifully as before. And she went on brushing my hair. I got up impatiently, and went and sat in my big chair by the window.

"No," I said. "Never mind my hair for a minute. Susan, I'm very much disappointed and put out. You are not treating either me or yourself fairly. With things as they are, I feel responsible for you. All this is very serious. You are young, and you have no experience."

Susan standing three feet away with lowered head, heard me out deferentially, although she knows quite well that I am six months her junior, and that it is hardly a year since I began to look after my own affairs. She simply said:

"Yes, Miss."

"Susan, look at me. Don't hang your head. Is this man respectable?"

"Oh, yes, Miss!"

"He says so himself, no doubt. But the world's full of very strange people. Who is he? Where does he come from? What is his name?"

Susan hung her head again, and did not answer. I saw that she had something to hide, so I tried another way.

"How far has it gone?"

"Well, Miss," she faltered after a pause. "He--he's asked me."

"When?"

"Yesterday, Miss."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything, Miss."

"Susan, don't be ridiculous. You mean, you didn't say 'No.' You encouraged him?"

"Oh, no, Miss."

"Susan, I won't be trifled with. Either you encouraged him or you didn't. Which was it? You surely don't expect me to believe that, after he'd asked you, he was content to walk away again without any kind of an answer?"

"Please, Miss, he didn't ask me that way. It was in a letter."

"A letter! Susan, I hope you've said 'No.' Have nothing at all to do with him. A letter, indeed! Why didn't he speak out like a man to your face?"

"Please, Miss, he couldn't."

"Couldn't? Why not?"

"Because I've never seen him."

I burst out laughing. The affair was a trifle after all. At the most and worst it was some village moon-calf's clumsy wooing; at the least (and likeliest) it was a practical joke. But Susan thought otherwise. I stopped laughing at the sight of her proud flush and pain.

"Come, Susan," I coaxed, "be a sensible girl. It's some stupid joke."

"No, Miss," said Susan firmly.

"Then what have you done? Have you sent a reply?"

"Yes, Miss. No, Miss; I mean, no. That is, I've written the answer, but I haven't posted it."

"That's a good thing. What have you said?"

Susan was silent quite a long time. At length she looked at me plaintively, and answered:

"I've wrote----"

"Written."

"I've written two letters and torn them up again. I think the third one is the best. But somehow, Miss, it doesn't seem quite right. I'm wondering, Miss----"

"Yes."

"I'm wondering whether … if I brought you his letter, Miss … ?"

"Of course I will, Susan. If it's a letter that ought to be answered, I'll do whatever I can. Bring it me after lunch."

"Thank you, Miss," said Susan warmly. But her face darkened again as quickly as it had brightened. I could see that a great doubt or fear had her in its grip.

It was unkind of me; but I had had enough of the whole business for one morning. "Finish my hair, Susan," I said; and I sat down again before the glass.

Susan resumed the work. But she had hardly taken one of my tresses into her hand before she flung it from her almost madly, and fell on her knees at my feet.

"Miss Gertrude," she cried. "Promise! Swear before God that you will not take him away from me!"

I was thunderstruck. But she was still crouched at my side, gripping my knees.

"Susan," I said sternly, "you are forgetting yourself. Get up. You are not well. Go to your room. I shall manage my hair somehow. Go to your room and lie down."

She gripped me fiercelier than before. "Before God, Miss Gertrude," she repeated. "Promise! Swear! Swear you won't drive him away."

"Drive" was a more endurable word. Besides, her fear and anguish were so sincere that my mere dignity shrivelled away like scorched paper in their blaze. For a second or two it was impossible to be mistress and maid. We were two women.

"Susan," I said very kindly, "if I must swear anything I will swear this. Like you, I am fatherless and motherless. And I swear that I will do my whole duty by you. If I honestly fear that there is misery lurking for you in this offer of marriage, I'll work and fight against it even if you kneel here weeping and praying all day for a year. But if I can honestly believe that it is for your happiness, there's nothing in reason that I won't do to bring it to pass. Now go to your room."

She has gone.

I must take care not to be dragged into any ridiculous positions. If Susan were a novelette-reader, it would be a different thing. No doubt a weekly orgy of sentiment by proxy is generally effective in making the average young woman immune. But Susan is still a child of nature; and if this letter-writing suitor is a scoundrel (as I expect he is), the poor child has some bad hours ahead. I wish most heartily it hadn't happened! And to think that by this time to-morrow I was to have been settled down cosily at Sainte Véronique!

Two o'clock.

How lovely lunching alone once again! Somehow a visitor always begins to send my spirits down and down and down after the first two or three days. When I saw her off yesterday I felt I couldn't have stood even Alice much longer. How different we are! If Alice knew that I wasn't going to France till Monday, she would worry about my loneliness just as she would worry over my neuralgia or my influenza. I expect that at this very moment she is writing a long letter to Sainte Véronique on the old text--begging me to go into a smaller house, and to look out for a companion, or to spend the winter with them. And I would make a large bet that she'll redeliver her solemn warning about my solitariness making me morbid. Yet there may be a little in it. Who knows? If Susan doesn't stay, I may be awfully glad to go to Alice's for a month or two after all.

Now for Susan and her precious letter.

After dinner.

Alice is right. Solitude is a mistake. If I hadn't the diary-habit, I should explode like a shell into little bits.

Still, for Susan's sake and her incredible adorer's, it's a good thing there's no one here, not even Alice. If there was anybody at hand to listen, I don't see how I could contrive to hold my tongue. As it is, it only relieves me a very little to scribble it all down in this book.

No wonder Susan under-toasted the toast and over-brewed the tea! I don't wonder any longer even at her heroics and melodramatics while she was doing my hair.

When she brought me her letter, addressed in a strong and distinguished hand to Miss Susan Briggs, The Grange, Traxelby, I saw at a glance that we hadn't to deal with a village bumpkin. Indeed, when I took the sheet of thick, good paper from the envelope and saw that it was embossed with the heading "Ruddington Towers," I wasn't surprised. I concluded instantly that Susan's pursuer was one of the three young artists of whom I've heard till I'm tired to death of them--the artists Lord Ruddington is said to have found starving in a Chelsea studio. I forget whether they've come down here to paint the hall or the chapel.

"Susan," I said, meaning to let her down gently, "I hope it isn't one of those young artists from London? An artist is interesting; but he's too impulsive, too vain, too unreliable. I hope----"

"Oh, no, Miss," said Susan hurriedly. "It isn't any of the young gentlemen that's doing the painting and decorating."

"Whoever he is," I answered, "he makes himself at home with Lord Ruddington's best stationery. Let me see."

I turned over the sheet and looked for the signature. Half-way down the third page I found it. The writer had signed himself with the single word "Ruddington."

"Susan," I demanded almost roughly, "why didn't you tell me about this at once?"

"If you please, Miss----"

"There's no if you please about it. Why, this creature, whoever he may be, is pretending to be Lord Ruddington."

Susan burst out crying, suddenly and copiously.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude," she sobbed; "I--I never thought it was pretending. I never dreamed any one could be so cruel. I thought it was real."

As I had begun to read the letter, I didn't take much notice. But Susan sobbed and talked on.

"Oh, Miss," she moaned, "to think I was nearly going to post the answer! I should never have been able to look the parish in the face again."

"Keep quiet, Susan," I said irritably. "Let me read it through."

And while Susan cried to herself softly, I read it straight through; turned back again and again to sentences here and there; and at last read it from beginning to end once more. This is what I read:--

RUDDINGTON TOWERS,

September 4, 1906.

I discard the ordinary forms of beginning because this is an extraordinary letter.

Since I came to Ruddington last Wednesday, I have seen you three times. For the second and for the third times, I am thankful; but the first sufficed to open my eyes to the truth. There is not now, and cannot ever be anywhere, any woman in the world save you whom I shall seek for a wife.

Although I did not need to ponder this step for more than a moment on my own account, I have considered it long and well on yours. I recognize the many and great difficulties in the way; but not one of them is insurmountable.

The person from whom I have learned your name and address has not the faintest notion of what is in my mind.

If your answer must be that I am too late, or that you feel you could not establish my happiness without losing your own, no third party need ever know that this has passed between us. But if your affection is still yours to give, then I shall beg for the earliest possibility of trying to convince you that, in bestowing it upon me, you would at least not be throwing it away on some one fickle or ungrateful, or wilfully unworthy.

Until you give me leave, I must not say more.

RUDDINGTON.

When I finally laid the letter down, I became aware of the abundance of Susan's tears and the heartiness of her sobs. A plan occurred to me. I got up and gave Susan a key.

"Don't be silly, Susan," I said. "See. Take this key. Go to the library. Unlock the deep drawer in the cabinet by the window. Bring me that violet leather scrap-book with all the letters and cuttings about Lady Traxelby's funeral."

Susan dried her eyes and went.

While she was away, I tried to think. Of course the letter would prove to be a forgery. But, fortunately, there was a quick way of making assurance sure. The week after Grandmother died, Lord Ruddington, who had only just come of age, wrote his condolences to Alice from Oxford. He knew Grandmamma rather well as a boy, and he had met Alice once in town. I felt sure we had kept the letter. What I meant to do was, first, to make poor Susan look at the real Lord Ruddington's handwriting with her own eyes; and, second, to tease or soothe her into a good humour till she could laugh at the practical joke. At the same time I made up my mind that if I could identify the joker, who was clearly a person of sufficient education to know better, he should smart for his insolence and cruelty.

Susan came back hugging the great violet book. I opened it in my lap and turned the leaves, hating the practical joker more bitterly than ever for reviving these sad and sacred memories in a connection so contemptible. Susan watched me eagerly. She had divined that I was searching for something that bore upon her rosy hopes and ashen disappointment. At last I found it. There was the heading, "Christ Church."

My heart almost stood still. The bold, stylish, interesting handwriting was unmistakable. The real Lord Ruddington and Susan's were one and the same man.

It was Susan who broke the silence.

"Oh, Miss," she murmured in awestruck tones, "I believe it's real after all!"

"Yes, Susan," I answered slowly; "it is real. I'm sorry, truly sorry, that I hurt you by my doubts. But it is so very extraordinary. And it's so very serious and important. Surely it was best to suspect it till we were certain."

"Oh, yes, Miss," protested Susan gratefully. And when I did not speak, she glanced coyly towards a second loaded envelope which had been lying on the table beside Lord Ruddington's.

"What!" I said. "Surely there isn't another letter, is there?"

"No, Miss. It's only mine--the letter I nearly posted in answer."

"Show it to me--that is, of course, if you want me to see it."

Susan pulled out a folded sheet, opened it, and laid it on my knee.

The first thing about the document that struck me was the fact that it represented a prodigal consumption of ink. In the ordinary course, Susan doesn't write very badly. But, in answering Lord Ruddington, she had formed the characters slowly and hugely and singly, as a child does at school. In two places it was evident that sandpaper or a penknife had removed blots. Altogether it was the sort of handwriting in which one might have expected the milkman to declare to the kitchen-maid,

"The rose is red, the violet's blue,

Honey is sweet, and so are you."

Susan's answer ran:--

Care of the Honourable Miss Langley,

THE GRANGE,

TRAXELBY, September 6, 1906.

SIR,--It was with the most various and lively emotions that I perused your Letter to which I am now endeavouring, though imperfectly, to reply.

I will have you know, Sir, that the first sentiment provoked in my bosom by your Epistle was one of Humiliation and Chagrin. "Better die," I cried, "a thousand deaths, than have lived to forget that Modesty which is the ornament of my Sex!" But I protest that after diligently examining my Conscience and ransacking my Memory, I cannot recall a single occasion in our casual intercourse when I have so far fallen from my duty as to offer you encouragement or to invite your present Advances.

Nevertheless, Sir, I am not blind to my woman's frailty; and, at the risk of forfeiting your Esteem, I will to-day indulge a boldness which I have never practised in the past, and will confess (shameless that I am!) that your conversation and person have not been distasteful to me. I perceive that my weakness has discovered to you the secret which I fondly hoped to conceal; and that I have succeeded but ill in my attempts to dissemble my Partiality from eyes and an Understanding, alas! too well accustomed to the sensibility of the female Heart.

You entreat me to despatch my answer by the hand of your courier, or, at the latest, by to-morrow's coach; and you affirm, Sir, that in the meantime you are consumed by the ardours of Impatience, and that you will partake neither refreshment nor rest. Far be it from me to prolong Sufferings which do me so much Honour, especially when they are endured by one for whom I have Regard and Esteem. But, Sir, I will have you bear with me while I remind you that this is a Business too weighty for haste; and that your present protestations of undying Fidelity and Adoration will be dearly purchased if I must endure in the future the bitter frosts of Indifference or the icy blasts of Reproach and Scorn.

I beseech you, Sir, to temper Passion with Patience, and not to increase by your Importunity the insupportable Distraction of happy, thrice unhappy

SUSAN.

"Goodness gracious, Susan!" I said, after I had got to the end of this amazing document; "in the name of everything, what on earth is all this?"

"It is my answer to his Lordship, Miss," Susan answered penitently.

"But, Susan, I don't understand. What is this about a courier and to-morrow's coach? And what do you mean by saying that his person and conversation are not distasteful to you? Didn't you assure me this morning that you'd never even seen him? Yet here you are writing to him about 'occasions in your casual intercourse.' Susan, I don't like to say it, but I'm very much afraid that----"

I pulled myself up. What I had been on the point of saying was that Susan had grossly deceived me, and that her case confirmed all I had ever heard as to the deepness of still waters and the duplicity that invariably underlies an appearance of baby innocence. But I remembered just in time that, with all the duplicity in the world to help her, the letter she had shown me would still be beyond Susan's powers. So I screwed a new tail to my unfinished speech and said:

"I'm afraid this won't do."

"I thought it didn't seem quite right, Miss," said Susan meekly. "More especially the piece about the coach. That was why I didn't post it."

"Susan, don't prevaricate," I said sternly. "It isn't like you, and I won't put up with it. If I am to have any more to do with this affair, you must really begin to treat me with perfect candour. Why did you tell me you had never seen Lord Ruddington?"

"If you please, Miss, I never have seen him."

"Never?"

"Not that I know of. I've seen----"

Susan paused and blushed.

"Go on, go on," I said impatiently. "You have seen--whom?"

"Please, Miss, there was a young gentleman in a dark green suit when we were at the post-office on Saturday. He stared at me as we went in; and when we came out he followed us as far as the Golden Eagle, looking at me all the time."

"It was very wrong of you to encourage him, Susan. But how do you know it was Lord Ruddington?"

"I don't, Miss. Maybe it's only my fancy."

"Susan, look here. Look at your own letter. Goodness knows where you got all this grand old-fashioned language from. It's the sort of language they used when Lord Ruddington's great-grandmother wasn't a day older than you are now. But that isn't my point. What I want to know is why you write to Lord Ruddington in this letter about 'occasions' when you have met?"

"I know it sounds wrong, Miss," replied Susan, more humbly than ever. "But that was just the way it was in the book. Those were the very words."

"The book?" I echoed, bewildered.

"Yes, Miss. I copied it out of the old book that's been lying in the lumber-room ever since I came to Traxelby. Perhaps you haven't seen it, Miss?"

Light was breaking over me, but I couldn't make out the full truth till Susan went on:

"The back is torn off, Miss. It has a picture of a young lady in a short-waisted muslin frock looking very sad and writing at a table. There's a wicked little boy in the corner of the room with nothing on but wings, and a and arrow, just going to shoot the young lady. The book's called The Complete Letter-Writer."

It took all my self-control and all my solicitude for poor worried Susan to restrain me from laughing loud and long. But, after the first shock of comicality, I was soon steadied again by the hard facts which still rose up before me. At another time this clearing up of the mystery of Susan's Late Georgian grammar and Johnsonian vocabulary would have been droll past resistance. But Lord Ruddington's letter was lying on the table.

Happily the beckoning hands of Fortune had not spoiled Susan yet. The prospect of wealth and rank had confused her brains, but it had not dazzled her inmost, sound self or altered her sterling principles or shaken her out of her well-worn ways. The mistress-elect of Ruddington Towers and my social superior of the near future still addressed me with the simple, respectful openness for which I have always liked her so well. After I had sat I don't know how long, silently trying to work out a solution, she said for the third time:

"I knew it didn't sound right, Miss. I will tear it up and burn it. And perhaps … when you're not too busy … perhaps, Miss Gertrude, you would tell me what I ought to say."

"Of course, Susan, of course," I answered. "I've promised you already. But it isn't easy."

Susan accepted the situation, and stood patiently awaiting the end of my meditations.

"Sit down, Susan," I said at last.

She sat down.

"I am obliged to ask you a few plain questions."

"Yes, Miss."

"If it turns out that he is really in earnest, do you wish to marry Lord Ruddington?"

"Oh yes, Miss, please!"

"You don't understand. In his letter he asks if you are free--if your affection is still yours to give. Now, is there anybody else that you're promised to already?"

"Oh no, Miss!"

"Not Gibson?"

Susan looked troubled. When she answered, it was falteringly, and without her usual openness.

"No, Miss." And she added uneasily, "I have never promised to be engaged to Gibson."

"But does Gibson expect that some day you will?"

"He oughtn't to, Miss," rejoined Susan, making shockingly quick progress in cunning.

"I mean, has Gibson talked to you in that way? And have you listened? Come, Susan, don't be silly. I am forced to ask these things. I've never seen Lord Ruddington, but from all I've heard of him he isn't the sort that would want to make himself happy by making another man miserable for life--not even if the other man is only Gibson. Lord Ruddington's letter is strange. For instance, it's rather stiff and dry, and like the letter of a much older man. But it rings true; it rings honourable. You must be honourable too. Otherwise the whole business will end in misery for everybody. Come, Susan. I don't want to preach a sermon, but you know as well as I do that if you and Gibson truly care for one another you will be a happier and better woman in a four-roomed cottage with Gibson than with Lord Ruddington at the Towers. Tell me how things stand."

After a struggle Susan blurted out:

"Yes, Miss, Gibson has asked me."

"When?"

"Well, Miss, the last time was last week."

"You didn't accept him. I've gathered that already. But did you give him a plain refusal?"

"Well, Miss----"

"Answer Yes or No, Susan, straight out. Have you let Gibson think that, if he gets on, some day you will marry him?"

Susan's eyes filled with tears. Her cheeks burned red.

"Come, Susan, tell me."

She broke into weeping.

"Oh, no, Miss, no!" she moaned between her sobs. "Not Gibson. Truly, Miss. I've never said a single word to encourage Gibson."

"Very good," I said. "But don't go on like that. There's nothing to cry about. If you can't be sensible, we must talk about it some other time."

I confess that, for a minute or two, I had indulged a hope that Gibson would prove to be Susan's favoured lover, and that, accordingly, Lord Ruddington's monstrous infatuation could be nipped in the bud. And when my hope was found to be groundless, I felt more than a little nettled. I foresee endless annoyance and inestimable losses of time and temper over this unheard-of madness of my preposterous young neighbour. We've been told for years that we shall see wonders when Lord Ruddington comes to live at the Towers; and, seeing he's only been here a week, I must admit he hasn't lost much time.

When Susan stopped crying she was less tractable. I suppose she resented my catechising her about Gibson. After all, I shouldn't have liked it myself. As soon as she was dry-eyed, she became a little more dry-hearted, and a good deal more dry-witted as well. She was more defiant, less dependent: much more the prospective lady of the Towers and much less the actual lady's-maid at the Grange. I noticed this in her answer to my first remark after her tears had ceased to flow.

"Susan," I said, "this is a matter which won't be any the worse of a night's delay. I will sleep on it, and so must you. Understand, I say sleep. I don't mean that you're to lie awake and let it worry you. We shall write Lord Ruddington a better answer to-morrow than we can to-day. Meanwhile, it won't do him any harm to be kept waiting a few hours longer."

"No," said Susan, "it won't. I've always heard it said that it does them no good to throw yourself at their heads."

For once she did not call me "Miss," and both the matter and the manner of her speech jarred on me. From Susan it sounded hard and vulgar. It was as if my rare and sweet Susan had suddenly descended to live a moment of her life two or three planes lower down.

I sent her off with some messages about dinner, and with enough plain work to occupy her for the rest of the day. And, now that I have put the whole thing down in black and white, I begin to understand how cordially I dislike it.