Susie resolved to show this letter to Clara, and ask her advice, apologizing for not doing so with the first one. In fact Susie had enjoyed, in a bitter way, her answer, knowing it would wound Dan’s vanity, and she had feared that Clara’s advice would interfere with this satisfaction. The letter was written in a moment of exaltation, and was the wisest thing Susie could have done; but yet after it was in the post-office and beyond recall, the poor girl suffered new tortures lest her words should alienate him still further from her; for she had to own that, after all, she had not utterly given up the hope that he was only temporarily under some new influence, that made him act so dishonorably toward her. Love is not only blind, but absolutely idiotic, in its faith. When once we are even partially free from his gilded toils, how wide our eyes are opened! How microscopic their power to detect and measure infinitesimal quantities of meanness in the lover. Clara was away when the second letter came, and Mrs. Forest and her visitor were out riding. Just as she had folded and put away Dan’s second letter, the doctor came in. He greeted her pleasantly, and threw himself wearily on the lounge in the dining-room. Upon his inquiring for Clara, Susie told him she was out. “But cannot I take her place, just for once?” she asked. “You want your bath, I know, for you always say that nothing rests you so much;” and not waiting for any verbal assent, Susie ran and pumped the water from the rain-cistern into the bath-tub, and added a pail of hot water from Dinah’s range. The bath refreshed him, as it always did, and when he came back Susie had his pipe filled for him, and a cup of fresh coffee beside it. “What a grand sachem I am, to be so coddled by nice women. Now come and talk to me, Susie,” he said, stretching himself on the lounge. Susie sat down beside him on a low stool, and showed him Dan’s first letter and a copy of her answer. “Good for your answer, Susie. I rather like it, though it is a little romantic. Yes, I like it; but your sending back the money—ah! that was too romantic by far. He’s a spendthrift, and the best possible use he can make of his money is to give it to you. Don’t you do it again—hear?—if he sends you any more.” Susie listened to the doctor, but could not tell him just then that Dan had sent more, having stubbornly determined to refuse it, as she had the first; but she would consult Clara first. Seeing her silent, the doctor said: “‘Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain.’