; but it grows less painful, encouraged by the lips of a
companion in suffering. I tell you fairly that see Susan I will and
must. I will watch round her home, wherever it be, hour after hour; come
what may, I will find my occasion. Is it not better that the interview
should be under your roof, within the same walls which shelter her
sister? There, the place itself imposes restraint on despair. Oh, sir,
this is no time for formal scruples; be merciful, I beseech you, not to
me, but to Susan. I judge of her by myself. I know that I shall go to
the altar more resigned to the future if for once I can give vent to
what weighs upon my heart. She will then see, as I do, that the path
before me is inevitable; she will compose herself to face the fate that
compels us. We shall swear tacitly to each other, not to love, but
to conquer love. Believe me, sir, I am not selfish in this prayer; an
instinct, the intuition which human grief has into the secrets of human
grief, assures me that that which I ask is the best consolation you can
afford to Susan. You own she is ill,--suffering. Are not your fears for
her very life--O Heaven? for her very life--gravely awakened? And yet
you see we have been silent to each other! Can speech be more fatal in
its results than silence? Oh, for her sake, hear me!"

The good man's tears fell fast. His scruples were shaken; there was
truth in what Mainwaring urged. He did not yield, but he promised to
reflect, and inform Mainwaring, by a line, in the evening. Finding this
was all he could effect, the young man at last suffered him to leave
the house, and Fielden hastened to take counsel of Dalibard; that wily
persuader soon reasoned away Mr. Fielden's last faint objection. It now
only remained to procure Susan's assent to the interview, and to arrange
that it should be undisturbed. Mr. Fielden should take out the children
the next morning. Dalibard volunteered to contrive the absence of
Lucretia at the hour appointed. Mrs. Fielden alone should remain within,
and might, if it were judged proper, be present at the interview,
which was fixed for the forenoon in the usual drawing-room. Nothing but
Susan's consent was now necessary, and Mr. Fielden ascended to her room.
He knocked twice,--no sweet voice bade him enter; he opened the door
gently,--Susan was in prayer. At the opposite corner of the room, by the
side of her bed, she knelt, her face buried in her hands, and he heard,
low and indistinct, the mu