d been that she and Eugene
would meet in some lovely studio, and that she would keep her own home,
and he would have his. It was something very different, this talk of
poverty, and not having an automobile, and being far away from home.
Still she loved him. Maybe she could force her mother to terms yet.

There were more struggles in the two or three succeeding days, in which
the guardian of the estate--Mr. Herbert Pitcairn, of the Marquardt Trust
Company, and, once more, Dr. Woolley, were called in to argue with her.
Suzanne, unable to make up her mind, listened to her mother's insidious
plea, that if she would wait a year, and then say she really wanted him,
she could have him; listened to Mr. Pitcairn tell her mother that he
believed any court would on application adjudge her incompetent and tie
up her estate; heard Dr. Woolley say in her presence to her mother that
he did not deem a commission in lunacy advisable, but if her mother
insisted, no doubt a judge would adjudge her insane, if no more than to
prevent this unhallowed consummation. Suzanne became frightened. Her
iron nerve, after Eugene's letter, was weakening. She was terribly
incensed against her mother, but she began now for the first time to
think what her friends would think. Supposing her mother did lock her
up. Where would they think she was? All these days and weeks of strain,
which had worn her mother threadbare had told something on her own
strength, or rather nerve. It was too intense, and she began to wonder
whether they had not better do as Eugene suggested, and wait a little
while. He had agreed up at St. Jacques to wait, if she were willing.
Only the provision was that they were to see each other. Now her mother
had changed front again, pleading danger, undue influence, that she
ought to have at least a year of her old kind of life undisturbed to see
whether she really cared.

"How can you tell?" she insisted to Suzanne, in spite of the girl's
desire not to talk. "You have been swept into this, and you haven't
given yourself time to think. A year won't hurt. What harm will it do
you or him?"

"But, mama," asked Suzanne over and over at different times, and in
different places, "why did you go and tell Mr. Colfax? What a mean,
cruel thing that was to do!"

"Because I think he needs something like that to make him pause and
think. He isn't going to starve. He is a man of talent. He needs
something like that to bring him to his senses. Mr. Col