ngs she
threw at me till at last I could bear it no more, but gave her back word
for word. Indeed, it would be difficult to say which had the best of
that quarrel, for if Suzanne's tongue was the nimbler and her words were
winged with truth, I had the weight of experience on my side and the
custom of authority. At last, as she paused breathless, I cried out:

"And for whose sake was all this done, you ungrateful chit, if it was
not for your own?"

"If that was so, which is not altogether true," she answered, "it would
have pleased me better, if, rather than make me a partner in this crime,
and set me as bait to snare Ralph, you had left me to look after my own
welfare."

"What!" I exclaimed, "are you then so shallow hearted that you were
ready to bid farewell to him who for many years has been as your
brother, and is now your affianced husband? You know well whatever he
might promise now, that if once he had gone across the sea to England,
you would have seen him no more."

"No," she answered, growing calm of a sudden, "I was not so prepared,
for sooner would I die than lose Ralph."

"How, then, do you square this with all your fine talk?" I asked,
thinking that at length I had trapped her. "If he had gone you must have
lost him."

"Not so," she answered, innocently, "for I should have married him
before he went, and then I could have been certain that he would return
here whenever I wished it."

Now when I heard this I gasped, partly because the girl's cleverness
took the breath from me, and partly with mortification that I should
have lived to learn wisdom from the mouth of a babe and a suckling. For
there was no doubt of it, this plan, of which I had not even thought,
was the answer to the riddle, since by means of it Ralph might have kept
his own, and we, I doubt not, should have kept Ralph. Once married to
Suzanne he would have returned to her, or if she had gone with him for
a little while, which might have been better, she would certainly have
brought him back, seeing that she loved us and her home too well to
forsake them.

Yes, I gasped, and the only answer that I could make when I reflected
how little need there had been for the sin which we had sinned, was to
burst into weeping, whereon Suzanne ran to me and kissed me and we made
friends again. But all the same, I do not think that she ever thought
quite so well of me afterwards, and if I thought the more of her, still
I made up my mind that the so