But we can tell you in a moment what it footed up. You
can walk through the Louvre in a minute, but you cannot see it in a week.

_Susan Barringer (sola, loquitur)_: "Three weeks yesterday. Yes, I s'pose
it's so. What a little fool I was! He goes everywheres--says the same
things to everybody, like he was selling ribbons. Mean little scamp!
Mother seen through him in a minute. I'm mighty glad I didn't tell her
nothing about it." [Fie, Susie! your principles are worse than your
grammar.] "He'll marry some rich girl--I don't envy her, but I hate
her--and I am as good as she is. Maybe he will come back--no, and I hope
he won't;--and I wish I was dead!" (_Pocket handkerchief._)

Yet in the midst of her grief there was one comforting thought--nobody
knew of it. She had no confidante--she had not even opened her heart to
her mother: these Western maidens have a fine gift of reticence. A few of
her countryside friends and rivals had seen with envy and admiration the
pretty couple on the day of Leon's arrival. But all their poisonous little
compliments and questions had never elicited from the prudent Susie more
than the safe statement that the handsome stranger was a friend of Aunt
Abbie's, whom she had met at Jacksonville. They could not laugh at her:
they could not sneer at gay deceivers and lovelorn damsels when she went
to the sewing-circle. The bitterness of her tears was greatly sweetened by
the consideration that in any case no one could pity her. She took such
consolation from this thought that she faced her mother unflinchingly at
tea, and baffled the maternal inquest on her "redness of eyes" by the
school-girl's invaluable and ever-ready headache.

It was positively not until a week later, when she met Allen Golyer at
choir-meeting, that she remembered that this man knew the secret of her
baffled hopes. She blushed scarlet as he approached her: "Have you got
company home, Miss Susie?"

"Yes--that is, Sally Withers and me came together, and--"

"No, that's hardly fair to Tom Fleming: three ain't the pleasantest
company. I will go home with you."

Susie took the strong arm that was held out to her, and leaned upon it
with a mingled feeling of confidence and dread as they walked home through
the balmy night under the clear, starry heaven of the early spring. The
air was full of the quickening breath of May.

Susie Barringer waited in vain for some signal of battle from Allen
Golyer. He talked more than usual, but