Those meteoric appearances of Geoffrey's had made life much harder for Suzette. She might have fought against her love for him more successfully perhaps had he been always near; had she seen him almost daily, and become accustomed to his presence as a common incident in the daily routine; but to be told that he was in the far north of Scotland, yachting with a friend; and then to be startled by his voice at her shoulder, murmuring her name in Discombe Wood; and to turn round with nervous quickness to see him looking at her with his pale smile, like a ghost--or to be assured that he was salmon-fishing in Connemara, and to see him suddenly sauntering across the lawn in the July dusk, more ghostlike even than in the woods, as if face and form were a materialization which her own sad thoughts had conjured out of the twilight. He would take very little trouble to explain his unlooked-for return. Scotland was too hot; the North Sea suggested a vast sheet of red-hot iron, blown over by a south wind that was like the breath of a blast-furnace. Ireland was a place of bad inns and inexorable rain; and there were no fish, or none that he could catch. He had come home because life was weariness away from home. He feared that life meant weariness everywhere. The days were hurrying by, and now Mrs. Mornington talked everlastingly of the wedding, or so it seemed to Suzette, who in these latter days tried to avoid her aunt as much as was consistent with civility, and fled from the Grove to Discombe as to a haven of peace. Mrs. Mornington loved to expatiate upon the coming event, to bewail her niece's indifferentism, to regret that there was to be no festivity worth speaking of, and to enlarge upon the advantages of Allan's position and surroundings, and Suzette's good fortune in having come to Matcham. "Your father might have spent a thousand pounds on a London season, and not have done half so well for you," she said conclusively. The General nodded assent. Certainly, between them they had done wonderfully well for Suzette. From this worldly wisdom the harassed girl fled to the quiet of Discombe, where the peaceful silence was only broken by the deep broad stream of sound from the organ, touched with ever-growing power by Mrs. Wornock. Suzette would steal softly into the music-room unannounced, and take her accustomed seat in the recess by the organ, and sit silently listening as long as Mrs. Wornock cared to play. Only when the last chord had died away did the two women touch hands and look at each other.