he showed in flooding color and staring eye how
profoundly it shocked him. Susan saw, but she did not
explain; she was not keeping accounts in emotion with the
world. She waited patiently. After a long pause he said in
a tone that contained as much of rebuke as so mild a dependent
dared express:

"He left about thirty thousand a year, Miss Lenox."

The exultant light that leaped to Susan's eye horrified him.
It even disturbed Clelie, though she better understood Susan's
nature and was not nearly so reverent as Garvey of the
hypocrisies of conventionality. But Susan had long since lost
the last trace of awe of the opinion of others. She was not
seeking to convey an impression of grief. Grief was too real
to her. She would as soon have burst out with voluble
confession of the secret of her love for Brent. She saw what
Garvey was thinking; but she was not concerned. She continued
to be herself--natural and simple. And there was no reason
why she should conceal as a thing to be ashamed of the fact
that Brent had accomplished the purpose he intended, had
filled her with honest exultation--not with delight merely,
not with triumph, but with that stronger and deeper joy which
the unhoped for pardon brings to the condemned man.

She must live on. The thought of suicide, of any form of
giving up--the thought that instantly possesses the weak and
the diseased--could not find lodgment in that young, healthy
body and mind of hers. She must live on; and suddenly she
discovered that she could live _free!_ Not after years of
doubtful struggles, of reverses, of success so hardly won that
she was left exhausted. But now--at once--_free!_ The heavy
shackles had been stricken off at a blow. She was
free--forever free! Free, forever free, from the wolves of
poverty and shame, of want and rags and filth, the wolves that
had been pursuing her with swift, hideous padded stride, the
wolves that more than once had dragged her down and torn and
trampled her, and lapped her blood. Free to enter of her own
right the world worth living in, the world from which all but
a few are shut out, the world which only a few of those
privileged to enter know how to enjoy. Free to live the life
worth while the life of leisure to work, instead of slaving to
make leisure and luxury and comfort for others. Free to
achieve something beside food, clothing, and shelter. Free to
live as _she_ pleased, instead of for the pleasure of a mast