“ Susan, would you like a life like that, even if you could live it in silks and old laces amidst all the luxury of Ruddington Towers?"
Susan was blushing hotly, as I had intended and hoped she would.
"Oh no, Miss," she said eagerly, all her honest blood and good training coming to the rescue. "But I don't think Lord Ruddington would do those sort of things."
"You think. But you don't know. Susan, I'm going to put you an old-fashioned question. Do you think it would be right to marry a man--never mind whether it's Lord Ruddington, or Gibson, or any other man--if you didn't love him?" ”

“ My eyes shone, my hair fell all about me, almost to my knees. In contrast, my feet were like two lilies, my neck was like a swan's. And, as I gazed, another veil was withdrawn from the mystery of life. By the light of the candle I saw my own cheeks glow red, as it was revealed to me what it will mean to live without love. What Fate denies me is not only communion with a kindred spirit. I, too, am flesh and blood.
Let Susan and Ruddington thank their stars that I was brought up gently, christianly, instead of wickedly, selfishly, in the passion-fraught air of a worldly home. ”

“ In her neighbourly good-nature and excellent wisdom, Miss Langley may choose for our meeting-place, Traxelby or London, or the Equator or the North Pole, or Sainte Véronique or the New Moon, or the summit of Mont Blanc or Ruddington Towers, or a coral island, or the Bottomless Pit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Suzanne is there in the midst, the arid, scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve's garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of Paradise.
Suzanne has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone. ”

“ I told Susan not to call me till nine o'clock. But I mean to slip downstairs softly; I have business at Bérigny. There is reparation to be made among those white graves where I slammed the gates of my heart. And, amid the holy stillness of the morning, I am fain to chasten my spirit in the Communion of Saints. For, on this day of my happiness, do I not feel that grannie, and father and mother, and all who have ever loved me, are yearning to me out of the depths that after all are not so very deep and down from the heights that after all are not so very high? ”

“ That Susan should marry a lord, and become mistress of Ruddington Towers, is no more than an oddity, an awkwardness. But it is a very different thing to look on while an honest lad like Gibson sees the girl he worships bribed away from him with money.
To say that I feel like a bather banged about on the stones by the breakers is to put it too weakly. My brains feel like a battlefield, where Greeks and Trojans, Hector and Achilles, have been trampling, and slashing, and charging all the long day. And for Helen and Paris, I have a lady's-maid and a groom! ”

“ Susan, there has been some dreadful, horrible mistake. It was not you, Susan, whom Lord Ruddington saw at Derlingham and in Traxelby church. He was misinformed. He has never seen you in his life. He does not want to marry you."
Susan stared at me, first, with a face as white as chalk. Then she reddened like a rose, and moaned like one wounded, with a choking moan.
"No, Miss Gertrude, no!" she pleaded in anguish, "Don't say it wasn't real. Don't say..."
"My poor Susan," I answered, "it wasn't real. But what does it matter? You have given him up for Gibson." ”

“ Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is the right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit, that even if the spell of her beauty were broken, I should still devote my whole life to winning her, though the obstacles were a thousand times as great. ”

“ Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.
When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.
Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.
I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Cheval d'Or. ”

“ If Susan can turn plain men into heroes, I ought to raise heroes into gods.
Yes. Although I have a hundred deformities of mind, a thousand uglinesses of conduct and character, which I could help and for which I am to blame, it is the plain truth that God chose to make me beautiful. Has not every one told me so, as long as I can remember? But Heaven knows that, although I have always felt glad, it has never made me puffed up or vain. And I'm thankful it hasn't. If it had, this would have been a bitter day for my pride. For, after all, Ruddington saw us both; and he fell in love with Susan. ”

“ Oh that it were Monday morning, with it all over, and Ruddington gone! How can I be sure that I have mother-wit, and force, and pride enough to scrape through? What if the sight of him fans Tuesday's flame instead of quenching the embers? What if I do truly love him, after all? What if I break down while he is asking me for Susan?
This useless, restless, shameless pen of mine is my ruin. Why do I never learn? Why did I not burn this book, days ago, to ashes? Even as I have sat writing these so few lines, the truth has darted out of its hiding-place. I can cheat myself no more. ”

“ When I saw his portrait facing mine, I knew. When I saw his place empty in the frame, I knew----oh, how hungrily! And when I sat on Sunday, bitter-hearted, under the Bérigny Calvary, I knew.
Yet God knows how I have fought it, how I have held it down even out of my own sight. And God knows how, according to my light, I have striven to do my duty by Susan, and by Gibson, and by them all.
My poor wits are too weary. They can parry the truth's bright, cruel thrusts no more. ”

“ If Ruddington were here to-night, if Susan came running hither through that door, how small a thing could sting me past control and rouse me to overwhelm them under my proud anger and pitiless love! I could dash his china shepherdess into a thousand pieces. I could compel him to forsake all and follow me to the end of the world.
A memory rises up suddenly and makes me laugh bitterly. Susan at Traxelby. How I smiled at her melodramatics when she knelt down in an agony of fear and made me swear that I would not take him away from her! ”

“ To watch his face--its lightning-flash of passionate eagerness, its following gloom of disenchantment and chagrin? To listen to his stammering apologies? To bestow pardons, revise arrangements? And, last of all, to stumble back over the stones alone--I, who had just known the support of his breast? Had I the strength? What if I should break down, as the light of love died out of his eyes, and weep bitterly? But there was no choice. My heart bled as I schooled myself once more to the haughtiness of artificial pride, and I said:
"This is monstrous. But as you please." ”

“ Georgette was sulky about the spilt claret; and, from merely feeling solitary, I went on to the knowledge that I was roundly hated. When I came up to my room, an hour ago, I found Susan had left Ruddington's letter under my blotting-pad. Envelope and contents were so flat and uncrumpled that I hardly think they have been cherished next to Susan's wildly-beating heart. Ruddington says:
SUZANNE, ALL MINE,--As ever, I love, honour and obey. Take a month, if you will, before you speak the word. But I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. ”

“ What on earth can it be that has turned a china shepherdess like Susan into a Helen of Troy? Why is she a storm-centre, a battlefield of heroes? I have seen enough of the world to know that both Gibson and Lord Ruddington are exceptional men. What is it in Susan that drives them mad? Susan's is not a case of the Eternal Masculine basely desiring lamb-like innocence and childish beauty. In her case the groom is as good as the lord in native chivalry and honour. ”

“ At the sight of a pretty face, you bent like a reed under an immense infatuation which you think is love. It is the tragedy of your life and mine, Beloved, that we, whom God made one for another, must go our separate ways, you with your infatuation, I with my love. ”

“ It makes the world seem so mean and lean. There ought to be grander men than Ruddington--men who would spurn honeyed sloth with dolls like Susan--men who would exult at the challenge of a proud, high-spirited woman as climbers exult at the white blaze of the Jungfrau, as hunters exult at the roaring of a desert lion, as soldiers exult at the sight of a strong city set on a hill. ”

“ As for Gibson, if he has parents it is fifteen years since they made a sign. Each one of us robbed before we could speak, or think, or remember, of a mother's care and love; and, for compensation, Gibson cheated of love altogether, Susan beloved where she cannot love. Ruddington loving with no love to answer.
I thought of myself. If the Christian's God is one with the Upholder of all things, his was the lightning which struck the old Grange and slew my father and mother as they slept. Where are they to-day? Are they annihilated, body and soul--as dead as stones on the beach? ”

“ That's it, Miss," sobbed Susan. "I don't deserve that you should be so kind to me, Miss."
"The danger is, Susan, that we can't depend on Love coming whenever we beckon to it. Perhaps Lord Ruddington is cold and unlovable. Perhaps he's too passionate to be affectionate. Unless you can love him in return, his love will only torture you. Susan, make quite sure of your ground. You are not like other girls. A mistake of this kind would first sour you and then kill you. Think of it all in this light, and you will understand my answer to Lord Ruddington better." ”

“ But as Ruddington sees it, with the wrong notion of Susan that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all rose and gold.
Life can be most hideously cruel. Better no beautiful dreams at all when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be soured for ever in order that Ruddington may go through life with a millstone of disenchantment round his neck. ”