ut them on the
table at my side.

"What is distressing Susan?" I inquired, without stopping to look at the
letters.

"She is fretting, sir, about your illness. Oh, Mr. Lepel, if you would
only try the sweet country air! If you only had my good little Susan to
nurse you!"

_She_, too, taking my uncle's view! And talking of Susan as my nurse!

"What are you thinking of?" I asked her. "A young girl like your
daughter nursing Me! You ought to have more regard for Susan's good
name!"

"I know what _you_ ought to do!" She made that strange reply with a
furtive look at me, half in anger, half in alarm.

"Go on," I said.

"Will you turn me out of your house for my impudence?" she asked.

"I will hear what you have to say to me. What ought I to do?"

"Marry Susan."

I heard the woman plainly--and yet, I declare, I doubted the evidence of
my senses.

"She's breaking her heart for you," Mrs. Rymer burst out. "She's been in
love with you since you first darkened our doors--and it will end in the
neighbors finding it out. I did my duty to her; I tried to stop it; I
tried to prevent you from seeing her, when you went away. Too late; the
mischief was done. When I see my girl fading day by day--crying about
you in secret, talking about you in her dreams--I can't stand it; I must
speak out. Oh, yes, I know how far beneath you she is--the daughter of
your uncle's servant. But she's your equal, sir, in the sight of Heaven.
My lord's priest converted her only last year--and my Susan is as good a
Papist as yourself."

How could I let this go on? I felt that I ought to have stopped it
before.

"It's possible," I said, "that you may not be deliberately deceiving
me. If you are yourself deceived, I am bound to tell you the truth. Mr.
Rothsay loves your daughter, and, what is more, Mr. Rothsay has reason
to know that Susan--"

"That Susan loves him?" she interposed, with a mocking laugh. "Oh, Mr.
Lepel, is it possible that a clever man like you can't see clearer than
that? My girl in love with Mr. Rothsay! She wouldn't have looked at him
a second time if he hadn't talked to her about _you_. When I complained
privately to my lord of Mr. Rothsay hanging about the lodge, do you
think she turned as pale as ashes, and cried when _he_ passed through
the gate, and said good-by?"

She had complained of Rothsay to Lord Lepel--I understood her at last!
She knew that my friend and all his family were poor. She had put
her own constru