As soon as the old lady was able to bear the unexpected news—the doctor and Lizzie had broken to her very gently the fact of Susan, her daughter, whom she supposed dead, and whose death she accused herself of causing, was still alive!—the dowager wanted her immediately to be brought to The Poplars; but when the doctor proposed it to Susan, she shrank back in alarm at the suggestion. The poor girl had such a nervous dread of ever beholding the painful scenes of her miserable childhood, and any allusion to the place or to her mother caused her such trembling fits, and seemed to make her to withdraw herself into herself, that the doctor saw that, for some time at least, the eventuality of Susan’s removal must be postponed.
When matters were explained to the dowager, she agreed with Doctor Jolly that Susan had better remain at his house, although she would not hear of it until he consented to accept remuneration. Fancy how changed the dowager was when she now was anxious to force money on one unwilling to receive it!
Susan still lived, therefore, at Bigton, undisturbed, with the doctor and his worthy sister; indeed, Deb took such a fancy to Susan, with her fair, grief-marked face, and frightened manner, that in a little while—although she at first grumbled at her coming there to interrupt the tête-à-tête life of Damon and her Pythias—she could not bear the idea of parting with her: there is no such pet in the world as an “old maid’s child.”
By-and-bye, when Susan was quite recovered, as she expressed a desire to see Havre again, and the house where she had lived so happily with Markworth, the doctor took her over. The Mère Cliquelle and her petit bon homme, were delighted to see La belle Madame again—it seemed like a resurrection from the dead to them, and they were in a great puzzle about all the circumstances of the case, which the doctor’s explanation, although delivered in his loudest voice, utterly failed to solve.
The Mère Cliquelle and her husband still let lodgings in their comfortable little house in the Rue Montmartre; and if you want un appartement bien garni, a cheerful hostess, and a landlord who “spiks Inglis,” decidedly broken, and has a partiality for chewing chocolate and bon-bons, you cannot do better than “take their first-floor!”
Although she was anxious to re-visit these scenes again, Susan did not care to stop after she got there. The place made her sad and melancholy, and she said she wished to go away the next day: the doctor, you may be certain, did not oppose her, and they returned to England immediately.
They crossed the Channel, however, via Folkestone, and went through London, as Mr Trump wished for Susan to sign some documents referring to the property she inherited under her father’s will—property which there was now no chance or loophole left for Markworth to lay claim to.
Thus it was that Doctor Jolly and Susan were both in London on the spot where Clara Kingscott had caught the man she pursued at last.
And here they now were in company with the lawyer, and the woman who so persistently hated him, in the presence of the dead man!
It was a sad shock to Susan; but a more fearful one to Clara Kingscott, who felt herself a betrayer, like Judas Iscariot when he discovered our Saviour with his accursed kiss. Remorse preyed upon her and gave her no rest. She afterwards, it is believed, entered a convent in the South of France, and is now a lay sister of the order of the Bleeding Heart!