"Because I cannot help seeing that her son's return has not brought her the happiness she expected. She has been thinking of him and hoping for his coming for years--empty, desolate years, for until she attached herself to you and me she had really no one she cared for. Strange, was it not, that she should take such a fancy to you, and then extend her friendly feeling to me?" "Yes, it was strange, undoubtedly. But I believe I owe her kindly feeling entirely to my very shadowy likeness to her son." "No doubt that was the beginning; but I am sure she likes you for your own sake. You are only second to her son in her affection; and I know she is disappointed in her son." "I hope he is not unkind to her." "Unkind! No, no, he is kindness itself. His manner to his mother is all that it should be; affectionate, caressing, deferential. But he is such a restless creature, so eager for change and movement. Clever and amiable as he is, there is something wanting in his character; the want of repose, I believe. He hardly ever rests; and there is no rest where he is. He excites his mother, and he doesn't make her happy. Perhaps it is better for her that he is so seldom at home. She is too highly strung to endure his unquiet spirit." "You like him though, don't you, Suzette, in spite of his faults?" "Oh, one cannot help liking him. He is so bright and clever; and he has all his mother's amiability; only, like her, he has just a touch of eccentricity--but I hardly like to call it that. A German word expresses it better; he is _überspannt_." "He is what our American friends call a crank," said Allan, relieved to find his sweetheart could speak so lightly of the man who had caused him his first acquaintance with jealousy. CHAPTER IV. "LET NO MAN LIVE AS I HAVE LIVED." Allan went back to Suffolk, and Suzette's life resumed its placid course; a life in which she had for the most part to find her own amusements and occupations. General Vincent was fond and proud of his daughter; but he was not a man to make a companion of a daughter, except at the social board. If Suzette were at home at twelve o'clock to superintend the meal which he called tiffin, and in her place in the drawing-room a quarter of an hour before the eight-o'clock dinner; if she played him to sleep after dinner, or allowed herself to be beaten at chess whenever he fancied an evening game, she fulfilled the whole duty of a daughter as understood by General Vincent. For the rest he had a supreme belief in her high principles and discretion. Her name on the tableau in the parlour at the Sacré Cœur had stood forth conspicuously for all the virtues--order, obedience, propriety, truthfulness. The nuns, who expect perfection in the young human vessel, had discovered no crack or flaw in Suzette.