must bring my friend back to look more closely into the matter. Return
now to the farm and say nothing of having met me, for by this evening,
or to-morrow at the latest, we will come there again and sift out the
truth of this question."

To this she agreed, being guileless, and the lawyer rode away after the
other. All that day and all the next Suzanne scarcely spoke to me, but
I saw that she was expecting something to happen, and that she glanced
continually towards the path by which the Englishmen had journeyed,
thinking to see them riding back to the farm. But they rode back no
more, and I am sure that the cunning lawyer never breathed one word of
his meeting with Suzanne and of what took place at it to the young lord.
That book was shut and it did not please him to reopen it, since to do
so might have cost him ten thousand pounds. On the third morning I found
Suzanne still looking down the path, and my patience being exhausted by
her silence, I spoke to her sharply.

"What are you doing, girl?" I asked. "Have we not had enough visitors of
late that you must stand here all day awaiting more?"

"I seek no new visitors," Suzanne said, "but those who have been here
only, and I see now that I seek in vain."

"What do you mean, Suzanne?"

Now of a sudden she seemed to make up her mind to speak, for she turned
and faced me boldly, saying:

"I mean, mother, that I told the Englishman with the red hair, the
agent, that all the fine tale you spun to him about Ralph was false, and
that he _was_ the man they came to find."

"You dared to do that, girl?" I said, then checked myself and added,
"Well, what did the man say?"

"He said that he would ride on and bring the young lord back that I
might talk with him, but they have not come."

"No, nor will they, Suzanne, for if they sought they did not wish to
find, or at least the lawyer did not wish it, for he had too much at
stake. Well, things have gone finely with you, seeing that your hands
are clean from sin, and that Ralph still stays at your side."

"The sin of the parents is the sin of the child," she answered, and then
of a sudden she took fire as it were, and fell upon me and beat me with
her tongue; nor could I hold my own before this girl of eighteen, the
truth being that she had right on her side, and I knew it. She told me
that we were wicked plotters who, to pleasure ourselves, had stolen from
Ralph everything except his life; and many other such hard sayi