The Mere Cliquelle answered the summons and on Tom (in extremely bad French) asking if Madame Markworth was in, the fat landlady herself ushered him up-stairs. She was very much taken with the appearance of Master Tom, who really, with his fine built frame, slightly emaciated with the confinement he had undergone from his illness, and his pale face, looked altogether rather a handsome, presentable fellow. The Mere Cliquelle gazed upon him with admiration: she had a Frenchwoman's eye for _un brave Monsieur_, and she showed it. She tapped at the door of Susan's little _salle a manger. "Un Monsieur Anglais_," she said, with which explanatory information Tom was ushered in before Susan could exactly comprehend what the Mere Cliquelle meant. Susan gave one look up of surprise and joy as the door opened and she recognised the visitor: she had been working and had not expected Markworth in for some time. Rushing forwards she flung her arms round Tom's neck. "Oh, Tom! Tom! You've come at last!" she said, and patted his cheek in delight, as if she were caressing a cat--a peculiarly sympathetic way the fair sex have of showing their affection. Tom himself was touched. He loved his sister greatly, the more too for her infirmity, and he though he comprehended it all at once in his reasoning mind. Poor Susan was no doubt kept here against her will: she was doubtless glad to see him for his own sake, but probably ten times more so, thinking he was about to take her back home again to England and her own people. He thought thus for a moment; but he was soon undeceived. After a moment or two he held his sister off from him, his two hands resting on her shoulders, and he looked in her face with surprise. "By Jove, Susan!" he exclaimed. "How altered you are; I should not have known you again!" He had not seen her for some weeks, and the gradual change which had been taking place in her came upon him all at once like a shock. "Would you not?" laughed Susan, "but I should have known you anywhere, although you look pale and thin. What has been the matter, Tom?" "Oh nothing!" he answered. "I have not been quite well. But you, Susan, by Jove! why you are all right again!" he was amazed at her having got rid of that melancholy reticence which had hung over her for so many years as he well knew. Instead of hanging back and not saying a word as she used to do, she now spoke to him freely, and looked just the same as any other girl. He could not believe it: it was wonderful! "Of course I am all right!" answered Susan, merrily, and then her voice changed to a tone of sadness and anxiety, "but you are not angry with me, Tom, are you?" "Certainly not! Why should I be angry?" "For going away and leaving you all like that, and--" She hesitated. "We don't blame you, Susan, my dear," said Tom, kindly. "We know that it was all that rascal Markworth's doing." Susan interrupted him at once, and spoke earnestly, with great emotion.