"What are you going to do?"
"It's no business of yours. They know very well. Leave me alone with them."
It was a terrible moment for timid Suzette. But love of the children had laid hold of her heart, and gave her strength.
"I can't go, Lady Harriet," she said in a low voice. "I can't leave you alone with them—not now."
"Not now?" cried Harriet fiercely.
"You're—you're not calm now. You're not fit——"
"You'd stand between me and my own children?"
"Dear Lady Harriet, I—I can't go away now." For she remembered so vividly all that the children's reminiscences, their nods and nudges, had hinted to her; she realised all the things which they had not told her; and she would not leave them now.
Her resistance set the crown to Harriet Courtland's rage. After an instant's pause she gave a half-articulate cry of anger, and rushed forward. Suzette tried to gather the children behind her, and to thrust the angry woman away. But Harriet caught Sophy by the arm and lifted her midway in the air. Garrett came right up to the door and peeped through.
"So you love papa and not me?"