Mrs. Mornington, who was less conventional than the rest of the General's womankind, put in her word for her niece. "Suzette wants no chaperon while I am living within five minutes' walk," she said. "She can come to me in all her little domestic difficulties; and as for parties, she is not likely to be asked to any ceremonious affair to which I shall not be asked too." Mrs. Mornington had been as kind and helpful as she had promised to be; and in all domestic cruxes, in all details of home life, in the arrangement of a dinner or the purchase of household goods Suzette had taken counsel with her aunt. The meadows appertaining to the Grove and to Marsh House were conterminous, and a gate had been made in the fence, so that Suzette could run to her aunt at any hour, without hat or gloves, and without showing herself on the high-road. "If ever we quarrel, that gate will have to be nailed up," said Mrs. Mornington. "It makes a quarrel much more awful when there is a communication of that kind. The walling up of a gate is a public manifesto. If ever we bar each other out, Suzette, all Matcham will know it within twenty-four hours." Suzette was not afraid that the gate would have to be nailed up. She was fond of her aunt, and fully appreciated that lady's hard-headed qualities; but although she went to her aunt Mornington for advice about the gardener and the cook, the etiquette of invitations and the law of selection with reference to a dinner-party, it was to Mrs. Wornock she went for sympathy in the higher needs of life; it was to Mrs. Wornock she revealed the mysteries of her heart and her imagination. "I seem to have known you all my life," she told that lady; "and I am never afraid of being troublesome." "You never can be troublesome," Mrs. Wornock answered, looking at her with admiring affection. "I don't know what I should do without you, Suzette. You and Allan have given my poor worn-out life a new brightness." "Allan! How fond you are of Allan," Suzette said, musingly. "It seems so strange that you should have taken him to your heart so quickly--only because he is like your son." "Not only on that account, Suzette. That was the beginning. I am fond of Allan for his own sake. His fine character has endeared him to me." "You think he has a fine character?" "Think! I know he has. Surely you know him too, Suzie. You ought to have learnt his value by this time." "Yes, I know he is good, generous, honest, and true. His love for his father is very beautiful--and yet he found time to come all this way to spend an hour or two with unworthy frivolous me." "He did not think that a sacrifice, Suzie, for he adores you." "You really think so--that he cares as much as that?" "I am very sure that he loves with his whole heart and mind, as his father--may have done before him."