"I am not going to accept congratulations," said Mrs. Mornington. "I'm very sorry the marriage has been postponed. Mr. Wornock and Suzette are admirably adapted for each other, and he is no more cracked than I am. And remember the marriage is put off--not broken off." "All the more reason why she should not send me back that Japanese absurdity," said Mrs. Roebuck, as if the paper-knife were of as much consequence as the marriage. * * * * * Suzette saw Mrs. Wornock nearly every day during that time of trouble--sometimes at Discombe, where they sat together in the music-room, or paced the wintry garden, saying very little to each other, but the elder woman taking comfort from the presence of the younger. "I am miserable about him," she told Suzette; and that was all she would ever say of her son. She had no suggestions to offer as to the cause of his disappearance. She uttered no complaint of his unkindness. Suzette inquired if the police had made any discovery about Allan's assailant. No, nothing; or, at least, Mrs. Wornock had heard of nothing. "Lady Emily may know more than she cares to tell me," she said. "Oh, I think not! Living in your house, indebted so deeply to your kindness, she could not be so churlish as to keep anything back." "She thinks of nothing but her son. She would have no mercy upon any one who had injured him." Her tone startled Suzette, with the recurrence of a terror which she had tried to dismiss from her mind as groundless and irrational. "No, no; of course not. Who could expect her to have mercy? However hard the law might be, she would never think the sentence hard enough. Her only son, her idolized son, brought to the brink of the grave, perhaps doomed to die, in spite of all that can be done for him." Suzette tried to shut out that horrible idea--the hideous fancy that the ruffian who had attacked Allan Carew was no casual offender, extemporizing a crime on the suggestion of the moment, for the chance contents of a gentleman's purse, and an obvious watch and chain. Murder so brutal is not often the result of a chance encounter. Yet such things have been; and the alternative of a private vengeance--a vindictive jealousy culminating in attempted murder--was too horrible. Yet that dreadful suspicion haunted Suzette's pillow in the long winter nights--nights of wakefulness and sorrow.