"You've refused Gibson. And you've made up your mind that you will marry Lord Ruddington--if you like the look of him when you see him in real life. It's your affair, Susan, not mine. But, as for kisses ... well, surely, he won't offer them and you won't take them till you are both decided what you are going to do."
"Then I'll tell him he mustn't, Miss," said dutiful Susan.
Later on, she asked:
"Please, Miss Gertrude, what will he say to me?"
"Dear me, Susan, I might be a witch. How do I know what he'll say to you?"
She endured my sarcasm. But Susan still believes that I know everything. It has never entered her head why I wrote that fatal love-letter to Ruddington on Tuesday. She accepts it simply as one more proof of my all-round efficiency. She wonders at it no more than she wonders at my writing adequate letters to my solicitor, or banker, or to a tenant. She thinks I know all about love, just as I know about law and business--as part of a liberal education.
"I don't mean his very words, Miss," she said. "I mean, Miss, what will he talk about?"
"For one thing," I replied, glad of the chance, "he'll talk about your letters. And that's a point I want to mention. Some day a way will be found of making a clean breast of everything. But, until I have seen him, and he is safely back in England, you mustn't give him the faintest shadow of a hint that any of those letters were mine. If you do, there'll be such a muddle that I don't see how we can get out of it."
"I know, Miss, I know!" said Susan alarmed. "I sha'n't breathe a single word."
"Don't be too confident," I answered, warming up to the business. "You may find it hard work keeping it in. He's bound to say a lot of things that you won't very well understand. For instance, take that letter I wrote on Tuesday night--the loving one, as you call it--the one you posted when I was ill. It's too late to scold you over it now, Susan; but you oughtn't to have rushed it off. We could have written something much more suitable."