licacy, he had avoided naming Susan to
Lucretia; and now, perhaps, sought the excuses which at times had chafed
and wounded her for not joining the household circle. If one of those
who glance over these pages chances to be a person more than usually
able and acute,--a person who has loved and been deceived,--he or she,
no matter which, will perhaps recall those first moments when the doubt,
long put off, insisted to be heard. A weak and foolish heart gives way
to the doubt at once; not so the subtler and more powerful,--it rather,
on the contrary, recalls all the little circumstances that justify trust
and make head against suspicion; it will not render the citadel at the
mere sound of the trumpet; it arms all its forces, and bars its gates
on the foe. Hence it is that the persons most easy to dupe in matters of
affection are usually those most astute in the larger affairs of
life. Moliere, reading every riddle in the vast complexities of human
character, and clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate
wife, is a type of a striking truth. Still, a foreboding, a warning
instinct withheld Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her
own fears. So horrible was the thought that she had been deceived, that
rather than face it, she would have preferred to deceive herself.
This poor, bad heart shrank from inquiry, it trembled at the idea of
condemnation. She hailed, with a sentiment of release that partook of
rapture, Susan's abrupt announcement one morning that she had accepted
an invitation from some relations of her father to spend some time with
them at their villa near Hampstead; she was to go the end of the week.
Lucretia hailed it, though she saw the cause,--Susan shrank from
the name of Mainwaring on Lucretia's lips; shrank from the familiar
intercourse so ruthlessly forced on her! With a bright eye, that day,
Lucretia met her lover; yet she would not tell him of Susan's intended
departure, she had not the courage.

Dalibard was foiled. This contradiction in Lucretia's temper, so
suspicious, so determined, puzzled even his penetration. He saw that
bolder tactics were required. He waylaid Mainwaring on the young man's
way to his lodgings, and after talking to him on indifferent matters,
asked him carelessly whether he did not think Susan far gone in a
decline. Affecting not to notice the convulsive start with which the
question was received, he went on,--

"There is evidently something on her mind;