"I'll never forget how good you've been to me, Miss," she said, choking down a sob.
"Find Georgette," I said. "While she's clearing the table, bring down my writing-case. We'll do it under the trees."
Susan danced off with a skittishness that surprised me. When she came back, I asked her what she had decided to say.
"I was thinking, Miss," she said, "we might say how nice it would have been if he'd galloped over the Heath to the station. And don't you think, Miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb?"
"Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan," I said peremptorily. "As for the Heath, it would have been very wrong of him. But how are you going to answer his postscript--this long bit at the end, all about your leaving me at once?"
"Leaving you, Miss?" asked Susan, mystified.
"Yes," I said, looking at her. "Don't you see? Lord Ruddington wants you to leave me at once."
Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan everything, and took her back to my heart.
"Oh, no, Miss!" she cried. "I didn't understand he meant that. I wouldn't ever do that."
What Susan had taken the postscript to mean I have no notion. Nor do I know yet whether, in the near future, I shall be expected to give Susan and her spouse a suite of rooms at Traxelby, or whether she will offer me a housekeeper's place at the Towers. It is plain that she does not entertain the idea of our being parted.