The letter which had been received that morning, and had thrown the rectory into the deepest dismay ran thus:

‘Now what,’ said Elly, facing them both defiantly, ‘what does that mean?’

Susie had read it too, at last, though at first she had refused to read it. Did she not know in a moment what it meant? For her there could be no doubt. Since she had grown a woman; since she had learned how things go in this world, and how difficult it is to conceal anything, there had always been a dread in Susie’s mind of what would happen when John found out. This had only come over her by moments, but now, in the shock of the discovery, she believed that she had always thought so, and always trembled for this contingency. She said to herself now that she had always known it would happen, which was going further still—always known—always dreaded—and now it had come. She did not need to read the letter, but she had done so at last, overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. She gave it back to Elly without a word. Of course she had known what it must be. Of course, from the first moment, she had known.

‘Susie,’ Elly said again, ‘tell me, what does it mean?’

‘You know him well enough,’ Susie said, falteringly; ‘you know he would not say what was not true.’

‘But if this is true,’ said Elly, ‘then he has said before what was not true. What can it be to me that his father is living? I do not mind—his father is nothing to me. I don’t want to hurt you, Susie, but if his father swept the streets, if he—oh, I don’t want to hurt you!’

‘You don’t hurt me,’ said Susie, with the smile of a martyr. ‘Oh, Miss Spencer, let us leave it alone. You see what he says. He will explain, if you insist, but he would rather not explain. Don’t you trust him enough for that?’

‘Trust him!’ said Elly. ‘I trust him so much that, if he sent me word to go to him and marry him to-morrow, I would do it. I trust him so that I don’t believe it, oh, not a word,’ the girl cried. And then she threw herself upon Susie, clasping her wrists as she tried, trembling, to resume her work. ‘Oh, tell me, what does he mean—what does he mean? What can his father be to me?’

‘Elly,’ said Mr. Cattley, ‘don’t you see how hard you are upon her? Take what Jack says, or let him explain for himself. I will go to him and get his explanation, if you wish—but why torture her?’

Elly shot a vivid glance from the curate to Susie, who sat with her head bent over her work, her needle stumbling wildly in her trembling hands.

‘You think a great deal of sparing her, Mr. Cattley. Aunt Mary says——’

Elly was in so great distress, so excited, so crossed and thwarted, so uncertain and unhappy, that to wound some one else was almost a relief to her. But she stopped short before she shot her dart.

‘I am sure she says nothing that is unkind,’ said the curate, firmly; but his very firmness betrayed the sense of a doubt. Mrs. Egerton had been his idol all this time, and was he going to desert her? Could she by any possibility think that he was deserting her? His own mind was too much confused and troubled on his own account to be clear.

Susie kept on working as if for life and death, not meeting the girl’s look, tacitly resisting the clasp of her hands, grateful when Mr. Cattley distracted Elly’s attention and relieved herself from that urgent appeal, yet scarcely conscious whence the relief came or what they were saying to each other to make that pause. Her needle flew along wildly all the time, piercing her fingers more often than the two edges which she was sewing together: and in her mind such a tumult and conflict, half physical from the flutter of her heart beating in her ears, making a whirr of sound through which the voices came vaguely, carrying no meaning. Elly’s appeal to her, though so urgent, was but secondary. The thing that had happened, and all the questions involved in it: how he had come to light again, that poor father whom Susie had been brought up to fear, yet whom she could not help loving in a way; how John had found out the family tragedy; what it would be to her mother to be brought face to face with it again, and to know that he knew it, whom it had been the object of her life to keep in ignorance. To think that all this had happened, and nobody had told her; that she had not known a word of it till now, when that intimation was accompanied by this impassioned appeal for explanation. Explanation! how could Susie explain? The very suggestion that another mode of treatment was possible from that which her mother had adopted, and that, instead of concealing it at any risk, John was setting it up between him and those he loved most, identifying himself with it, even offering explanation if necessary, was appalling to Susie.

It was only when she had a moment of silence to consider, that it all came upon her. She did not know what they were saying, or desire to hear. She felt by instinct that some other subject had been momentarily introduced, and was grateful for the moment’s relief to think. But how could she think in the shock of this unexpected revelation, and with all that noise and singing in her ears? She came to herself a little when the voices ceased, and she became aware that they were looking at her, and wondering why she did not say anything—which was giving up her own cause as much as if she confirmed the truth. She looked up with eyes that were dim and dazed, but tried to smile.

‘I cannot tell you what John means,’ she said; ‘how could I, when I don’t know what he means? He has—very high notions: and he thinks—nothing good enough for you. We have no—pretensions—as a family.’

Susie tried very hard to smile and look as if John were only very scrupulous, humble-minded, feeling himself not Elly’s equal in point of birth.

‘We’ve gone over all that,’ cried Elly, with an impatient wave of her hand. ‘And what does it matter—to anybody, now-a-days? It is all exploded; it is all antiquated. Nobody thinks of such a thing now. And Jack knows well enough. Besides, it is ridiculous,’ cried the girl; ‘he is—well, if you must have it, he is conceited, he is proud of himself, he is no more humble about it than if he were a king. Do you think I’m a fool not to know his faults? I’ve known them all my life. I like his faults!’ Elly said.

And then there was again a pause. Nobody spoke. It became very apparent to both these anxious questioners—to Elly, when the fumes of her own eager speech died away, and to Mr. Cattley, who was calmer—that Susie did not wish to make any reply, that she knew something of which this was the natural consequence, something which she was determined not to tell, something which was serious enough to justify John’s letter, which showed that it was no fantastic notion on his part, but a reality. Susie herself was dimly aware, even though she had her eyes on her work as before, that they were looking at her with keen examination, and also in her mind that they were coming to this inevitable conclusion: but what could she do?

‘Every family,’ she said, faltering, ‘has its little secrets, or at least something it keeps to itself. I don’t know that there is more with us than with other people——’ But her voice would not keep steady. ‘The only thing,’ she went on, sharply, feeling a resource in a little anger, ‘is that people generally—keep these things to themselves;—but John, it seems that John——’ And here she came to a dead stop and said no more.

Elly had grown graver and graver while Susie spoke. Her excitement and impatience to know, fell still, as a lively breeze will sometimes do in a moment. Her eyes, which Susie could not meet, seemed to read the very outline of the drooping figure, the bent head, the nervous stumbling hands so busy with work which they were incapable of doing. Elly’s face settled into something very serious. She flung her head back with the air of one taking a definite resolution.

‘In that case,’ she said, lingering a little over the words in case they might call forth an answer, ‘in that case, I think I had better go.’

Mr. Cattley, much perplexed, went with her to the door. He went up the street with her, his face very grave too, almost solemn.

‘Don’t do anything rash, Elly,’ he said. ‘We know Jack. I—I can’t think he is to blame.’

‘To blame!’ Elly said, with her head high, as if the suggestion were an insult. Then she added, after a moment, ‘Yes, he’s to blame, as everybody is that makes a mystery. Whatever it is, he might have known that he could trust me; that is the only way in which he can be to blame.’

Susie had thrown away her work in the ease of being alone. It was an ease to her, and the only solace possible. She put her arms on the table and her face upon them, and found the relief which women get in tears. It is but a poor relief; yet it gives a sort of refreshment. Her burning and scorched eyelids were softened—and the sense of scrutiny removed, and freedom to look and cry as she would, was good. But the thronging thoughts that had been kept in check by that need of keeping a steady front to the world, which is at once an appalling necessity and a support to women, came now with a wilder rush and took possession altogether of her being. How was it that he had appeared again, that spectre whom she had feared since she was a child, yet for whom by moments nature had cried out in her heart, Papa! She, like John, only knew the child’s name for him, only remembered him as smiling and kind; though she had learned, as John never had learned, that other aspect of him which appeared through her mother’s eyes. Susie knew something, embittered by the feeling of the woman who had gone through it all, of the long and hopeless struggle that had filled all her own childhood, and of which she had been vaguely conscious—the struggle between a woman of severe virtue, and an uprightness almost rigid, and a man who had no moral fibre, yet so many engaging qualities, so much good humour, ease of mind, and power of adapting himself, that most people liked him, though no one approved of him: the kind of father whom little children adore, but whom his sons and daughters, as they grow up, sometimes get to loathe in his incapacity for anything serious, for any self-restraint or self-respect.

His wife had been the last woman in the world to strive with such a nature, and perhaps the horror that had grown in her, and which she had instilled unconsciously into Susie’s mind, was embittered by this knowledge. Susie knew all the terrible story. How the woman had toiled to keep him right, to convince him of the necessity of keeping right, to persuade him that there was a difference between right and wrong: and she knew that this always hopeless struggle had ended in the misery and horror of the shame which her proud mother had to bear, yet would not bear. All this came back to her as she lay with her head bowed upon her arms in the abandonment of a misery which no stranger’s eye could spy upon. And he had come back? and how was mother to bear it? And how had John found it out? And why did he not hide in his own heart, as they had done, this dreadful, miserable secret? She, a girl, had known it and kept it a secret, even from her own thoughts, for fourteen years. Day and night she had prayed for the unfortunate in prison, but never by look or word betrayed the thing which had changed her life at twelve years old, and sundered her from others of her age, more or less completely ever since. It had separated her so completely that till now Susie had never lived in entirely natural easy relations with other girls, or with men of her own age. There had always been a great gulf fixed between her and youthful friendship, between her and love. This had been somehow bridged over here in this innocent place—and now! Oh, how would mother bear it? Oh, how had John found it out?

She was in the midst of these confused yet too distinct and certain trains of recollections and questions, when her solitude and ease of self-abandonment were suddenly disturbed. She had not heard any step, any token of another’s presence until she suddenly felt a light touch upon her bowed head, and on her arm. Susie had given herself up too completely to her own thoughts to be capable of considering the plight in which she was. She started and looked up, her face all wet with her weeping. She thought, she knew not what—that it was he perhaps, the terror of the family, though she remembered nothing of him but kindness; or John, it might be John, come to fetch her, to claim her help in these renewed and overwhelming troubles. She started up in haste, raising to the new-comer her tell-tale face. But it was not John, nor her father. It was Mr. Cattley who was standing close by her with his hand touching her arm. He had touched her head before, as she lay bowed down and overwhelmed. His eyes were fixed upon her, waiting till she should look at him, full of pity and tenderness.

‘Oh, Mr. Cattley!’ she cried, in the extremity of her surprise. He only replied by patting softly the arm on which his hand lay.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what is wrong. Tell me what is wrong. The secret, if it is a secret, will be safe with me: but you cannot bear this pressure; you must have some relief to your mind. Susie—I will call you what Elly calls you for once—do you know what I was going to say to you when she came?’

Susie raised her tear-stained face to his with a little surprise, and said no.

‘So much the worse for my chances,’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘You might have divined, perhaps; yet why should you? I was going to tell you a great many things I will not say now—to explain——’ Something like a blush came upon his middle-aged countenance. ‘This is not the time for that. I was going to ask you if you would marry me. There: that is all. You see by this that I am ready to keep all your secrets, and help you and serve you every way I can. It is only for this reason that I tell you now. Will you take the good of me, Susie, without troubling yourself with the thought of anything I may ask in return? There, now! Poor child, you are worn out. Tell me what it is.’

‘Oh, Mr. Cattley,’ she cried, and could say no more.

‘Never mind Mr. Cattley: tell me what troubles you—that is the first thing to think of. I guess as much as that it is something which poor Jack has found out, but which you knew. I will go further, and tell you what I guessed long ago—that this poor father has done something in which there was trouble and shame.’

He had seated himself by her and taken her hand, holding it firmly between his, and looking into her face. Susie felt, as many have felt before her, that here all at once was a stranger to whom she could say what she could not have said to the most familiar friend.

‘We hoped,’ she said, in a low voice—‘we thought—that nobody knew.’

‘Not John?’

‘Oh, John last of all; that was why he lived here; that was why we left him, mother and I, and never came, and let him think that he was nothing to us. He thought we had no love for him. He said to mother once that she was not his mother. Ah!’ cried Susie, with a low cry of pain at that recollection, ‘all that he might never know.’

‘And now he has found out: how do you think he can have found out?’

Susie shook her head.

‘The time was up; we knew that, and we were frightened, mother and I, though there seemed no reason for fear, for we had left no sign to find us by. Oh, I am afraid—I was always afraid—that to do that was unkind. He was papa after all; he had a right to know, at least; but mother could not forget all the dangers, all that she had gone through.’

‘I suppose, then,’ said Mr. Cattley, with a little pressure of her hand, ‘his name was not your name?’

Susie looked at him with something like terror. Her voice sank to the lowest audible tone.

‘His name—our real name—is May.’

The curate had great command of himself, and was on his guard; nevertheless she felt a thrill in the hand that held hers: Susie sensitive, and prepared to suffer, as are the unfortunate, attempted to draw hers away—but he held it fast; and when he spoke, which was not for a minute, he said, with a movement of his head,

‘I think I remember now.’

The grave look, the assenting nod, the tone were all too much for her excited nerves. She drew her hand out of his violently.

‘Then if you remember,’ cried Susie, ‘you know that it was disgrace no one could shake off. You know it was shame to bow us to the dust; that we never could hold up our heads, nor take our place with honest people, nor be friends, nor love, nor marry, with such a weight upon us as that; and now you know why John, poor John, oh, poor John!’

She hurried away from the table where the curate sat, regarding her with that compassionate look, and threw herself into her grandfather’s chair which stood dutifully by the side of the blank fireplace where Elly and John had placed it. Her simple open countenance, which had hid that secret beneath all the natural candour and truth of a character which was serene as the day, was flushed with trouble and misery. Life seemed to have revealed its sweeter mysteries to Susie only to show her how far apart she must keep herself from honest people, as she said. And her heart cried out—almost for the first time on its own account. Her thoughts had chimed in with her mother’s miseries, but had not felt them, save sympathetically; now her own time had come—and John’s—John’s, who knew nothing, who must have discovered everything at one stroke; he who was not humble, nor diffident, but so certain of himself and all that he could do. What did it matter for anybody in comparison with John?

Mr. Cattley did not disturb her for some time. He let that passion wear itself out. Then he went and stood with his back to the fireplace, as Englishmen use, though it was empty.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘that we understand, let us lay our heads together and think what can be done.’

‘There is nothing to be done,’ said Susie. ‘Oh, Mr. Cattley, go away, don’t pity me. I can’t bear it. There is only one thing for me to do, and that is to go home to mother and John.’

‘I do not pity you,’ he said, ‘far from that. You have got the same work as the angels have. Why should I pity you? It hurts them too, perhaps, if they are as fair spirits as we think. But I am going with you, Susie: for two, even when the second is not good for much, are better than one.’

She clasped her hands and looked up at him with a gaze of entreaty.

‘Don’t,’ she cried, ‘don’t mix yourself up with us! Oh, go away to the people who are fond of you, to the people who are your equals. What has a clergyman to do with a man who has been in prison? Oh, never mind me, Mr. Cattley. I am going to my own belongings. We must all put up with it together the best way we can.’

‘Susie,’ he said, softly, ‘you are losing time. Don’t you know there is an evening train?’