But perhaps it was Joan, who was not greatly moved by a woman's tears, who brought Susan's to an end by remarking, "We are getting near Lemborough. I think this train stops there."
When Susan had dried her eyes, and was able to speak with no more than an occasional hiccough, she said, "I am sorry for Mrs. Amberley. I don't know her very well, and I don't like her, but it's a horrible position to be put in."
"Well, I don't think you need waste much sympathy on her," said the Squire. "If that's all you are crying about you might have saved your tears, my dear. She won't get more than she deserves."
"It isn't what I was crying about," said Susan. "You spoke as if all of us who were at Brummels were just the same as she is."
The Squire did privately think that most of them, except Humphrey and Susan themselves, and Lord Sedbergh, and of course Joan, would have been capable of acting in the same way as Mrs. Amberley, if necessity and opportunity had prompted them, but he said, "Oh no, Susan. I didn't mean to go nearly so far as that. Still, there's a proverb about evil communications, you know, and I do hope you will take a lesson from this nasty business and steer clear of the sort of people who go in for that kind of thing."
He spoke as if the people received into fashionable society who "went in" for stealing pearl necklaces were easily distinguishable from the rest. This was probably not precisely what he meant, and as Susan plucked up a smile and said, "Well, you've said some very unkind things to me, but I'm going to be a good girl now, and I hope you won't say any more," he allowed the subject to drop altogether, and the rest of the journey passed in peace.
CHAPTER V
A QUIET TALK
Frank and Nancy were on the platform at Kencote. The Squire, longing for his home whenever he was away from it, like any schoolboy detached from the dear familiar, was pleased to see their smiling faces. They were agreeably surprised by the warmth of his greeting, having expected him to reach home in even a worse state of mind than that in which he had left it, and not having realised that a dreaded ordeal has lost most of its sting when it has been gone through, even if its terrors have been worse than fancy had painted them.