ess he
poured into it this unwelcome information: "I've found out that your
Mr. Falconer is the man. But who the lady is I have not been able to
discover. She is an inscrutable mystery--a good heroine for Wilkie
Collins."

"Who told you?" Gertrude demanded in a challenging tone.

"Jack Sidmore: he knows your Mr. Falconer well. Why, Falconer's no
new man: he's an old resident here. He's of the firm of Falconer,
Trowbridge & Co., grain-dealers on Canal street. You know Phil
Trowbridge?"

"I'm sure there's nothing wrong about Mr. Falconer, or he wouldn't
have been at Minnie Lathrop's party." said Gertrude resolutely.

"Well, Jack Sidmore knows the gentleman, and he says there is no doubt
he has suspicious relations with Miss or Madam The-Lord-knows-who. So,
you see, you're to drop Mr. Falconer like a hot potato--to give him
the cut direct."

"It would be a shame to if he's all right, and I feel certain he is,"
said Gertrude, still showing fight.

"Now, look here, Gert: don't be foolish. It won't do to compromise
yourself. Be advised by me: I'm your guardian angel, you know. You can
spare Mr. Falconer: your train will be long enough with him cut off."

"He's the most interesting acquaintance I've made this winter," said
Gertrude persistently.

"Don't you say so, Sue? Oughtn't Gertrude to cut him? You've heard
what we've been talking about, haven't you?"

"Please don't appeal to me," Susan managed to say without lifting her
eyes from the blurred page before her.

She had been more than once on the point of telling Gertrude and Tom
what she knew about Mr. Falconer--that it was her house he had
rented for his friend, etc. But everything about the matter was so
indefinite. She was fearful of exposing her unhappy heart, and she had
withal some vague hope of unsnarling the tangled skein when she should
find opportunity to think. So she allowed them to finish up their
discussion and to leave the room without a hint of the facts in her
knowledge.

When they had gone the set, statuesque features relaxed. A stricken
look settled like a shadow over them. You would have said, "It will
never depart: that face can never brighten again."

The thing in Susan's heart was not despair. There was the
suffering that comes from the blight of a sweet hope, from the rude
dispossession of a good long withheld. But overriding everything else
was humiliation--a feeling of degradation, such as some deed of shame
would engender. Her sp