"The newspapers!" Suzette repeated with an intimation of abhorrence.
"Oh, but he isn't like the others," Louise hastened to explain. "Very handsome, and interesting, and pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, but he's had to be a reporter. He's awfully clever; but Matt says he's awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. Now they think he won't have to interview people any more—he came to interview papa, the first time; and poor papa was very blunt with him; and then so sorry. He's got some other kind of newspaper place; I don't know what. Matt liked what he wrote about—about, your—troubles, Sue."
"Where was it?" asked Sue. "They were all wickedly false and cruel."
"His wasn't cruel. It was in the Abstract."
"Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken the money," Sue answered unrelentingly.
"Did he? I thought he only said if he did. I don't believe he said more. Matt wouldn't have liked it so much if he had. He's in such bad health. But he's awfully clever."
The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, with Simpson driving furiously, as he always did when he saw people. Louise threw her arms round her friend again. "Let me go back and stay with you, Sue! Or, come home with me, you and Miss Northwick. We shall all be so glad to have you, and I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dreadful!"
"Yes. But it's easier to bear it here than anywhere else. Some day all the falsehood will be cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore it where he left us. We have decided what we shall do, Adeline and I. We shall try to let the house furnished for the summer, and live in the lodge here."
Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue gate, and said it would be beautiful.
"We've never used it for any one, yet," Suzette continued, "and we can move back into the house in the winter."