"But it can hurt me, her aunt. I feel inclined to slap my most intimate friends when they ask me leading questions, evidently longing to hear that Allan has acted badly. And when I assure them that my niece is alone to blame, I can see in their faces that they don't, or won't, believe me. And why should they believe me? Could any girl, not an idiot, throw over such a match as Allan has become since his father's death?" "I hope you don't mean to say that my girl is an idiot?" "I say that she has acted like an idiot in this affair." "And I say that she has acted like an honest woman." "I shall never be able to look Lady Emily Carew in the face again." "Don't be alarmed about Lady Emily. She will be no more sorry to keep her son to herself than I am to keep my daughter." "She won't have him long. He'll be going off and marrying some horrid end-of-the-century girl in a fit of pique." "I don't believe he is such a fool." Matcham might talk its loudest, and dispute almost to blows, as to which was the jilter and which the jilted. The principal performers in the tragedy were well out of ear-shot--Allan at Fendyke with Lady Emily, Suzette at Bournemouth with an old convent friend and her invalid mother, people who had no connection with Matcham, and in whose society the girl could not be reminded of her own wrong-doing. The invitation to the villa at Branksome had been repeated very often; and on a renewal of it arriving just after that painful scene at Discombe, Suzette had written promptly to accept. "If you don't mind my coming to you out of spirits and altogether troubled in mind, _chérie_," she wrote; and the girl, who was a very quiet piece of amiability, and who had worshipped her livelier school-fellow, replied delightedly, "Your low spirits must be brighter than other people's gaiety. Come, and let the sea and the downs console you. Bournemouth is lovely in September. Mother has given me the charmingest pony, and I have been carefully taught by our old coachman, who is a whip in a thousand, so you need not be afraid to trust yourself beside me." "Except for father's sake, it might be a good thing if she were to throw me out of her cart and kill me on the spot," mused Suzette, as she sat listlessly watching her maid packing her trunk. Among the frocks, there was one of the Salisbury tailor's confections, a frock which was to have been worn by Mrs. Allan Carew, and Suzette felt that she would sink with shame when she put it on. "I ought to be prosecuted for obtaining goods under false pretences," she thought. Geoffrey Wornock found a telegram waiting for him at the little post-office at Hartzburg, and the mere outward casing of that message set his heart beating furiously. There must be news of his love in it, news good or bad. "I will not live through her wedding-day, if she marries him," he told himself. The telegram was from his mother. "The marriage is broken off with much sorrow on both sides."