“I’m coming to that,” answered Mrs. Burfield. “It’s about eighteen months ago that she came back to me, looking, Oh! so changed, so broken down, that I hadn’t the heart to ask her any questions. I could see that all had gone wrong, and I could guess pretty well what kind of wrong it was. She never mentioned Mr. Lesley’s name; and there was something in her face that seemed to make me afraid to mention it myself. She wanted to lodge with me, she said, and would pay me for her lodgings. I could see that she wore a wedding-ring on her finger, but she had no other jewellery whatever. She was dressed in black,--black silk that had once been very handsome, but which was rusty and shabby then. The first night she came to me she sat up very late writing, and in the morning she went out with a letter in her hand. She was with me more than two months; but that was the last time I ever saw her write. She used to be fond of reading; but now she never took up a book, though Mr. Lesley had left a good many of his books in the little chiffonier in the parlour, thinking to come back, as he told me. She used to be fond of the children; but now she never noticed them, and after a little while they seemed to shrink away from her, as if she was strange to them somehow. For hours and days together she used to sit in the bow-window, watching the road from the station, as if she expected some one. At dusk she would go out and walk upon the Esplanade, just at the time that he used to walk with his cigar. It was the dull season, and there was no one to notice her. At last, about the middle of May, when the visitors began to come to Coltonslough, she told me one day that she must leave me. I said, ‘Was it on account of the lodgings?’ because she knew I used to raise the rent at that time of year, and I thought that might be the cause of her wanting to go. But she said, ‘Oh! no, no.’ She had only had one purpose in stopping so long, and that was in the hope of seeing some one, or getting an answer to a letter she had written; and now there was no longer any hope of that. So I couldn’t persuade her to stay any longer, do what I would, and she went away. She had friends in London, she told me, who had promised to put her in the way of getting her own living somehow or other. I kissed her this time, willing enough, poor child, and I went with her to the station; and I thought her pale face looked almost like a ghost’s as she waved her hand to me from the carriage window.” “You’re a good woman!” cried Mr. Tredethlyn, half crushing Mrs. Burfield’s skinny hands in his strong fingers,--“you’re a good woman, and you did your best to befriend that poor girl.” Mrs. Burfield sighed, and wiped her eyes with the corner of a rusty black-silk apron. The world had been very hard for her; but there was a gentle, womanly haven somewhere in her breast, and Susan Tredethlyn had taken shelter there.