Heaven knows I was vexed enough when Alice would persist in teasing me last Sunday about Lord Ruddington. What would Alice not have said if she had known that he was hardly three miles away at the very time she was plaguing me? On Wednesday, at the station, her last words were, "Gertie, don’t be a fool." From Alice’s point of view, Gertie will be a fool if Gertie doesn’t so play her cards as to become Lady Ruddington. I did so hate it. If I am happy, why can’t people leave me alone? Alice will be dreadfully indignant if ever she finds out that I knew Lord Ruddington was coming at once to the Towers. But if I had told her, she would only have fought against me going off to Sainte Véronique. Yet, why in the world should I be going to a place like Sainte Véronique at the fag-end of the season? I’m going simply and solely because I was determined not to give the tiniest scrap of opportunity to the gossips and matchmakers who would have been so ready to connect the young spinster of Traxelby Grange with the young bachelor of Ruddington Towers. But I’m wandering away from my own point. I say, Alice’s chaff and hints and coaxings were bad enough; but this farce of Susan’s is a million times worse. I admit I’m weak enough to care what people say and think; and what sort of a position will it be when all the world knows that his noble lordship of Ruddington is come to the Grange a-wooing, not me but my maid? It’s perfectly hateful. _Noon_. Susan is herself again. I don’t mean that she isn’t still burdened with the worries and anxieties of her amazing good luck. Indeed, she confesses that she has had a wakeful night. But in her work and her behaviour she’s once more as good as gold. After all, it was lean and ungenerous of me yesterday to be jarred by her one low-class remark. We are none of us at our best every single minute of our lives. When I’d written in this diary, with my teeth chattering, at five o’clock this morning, I crawled back into bed in a very sour temper; and if Susan had come in sulky with a second lot of weak toast and strong tea, it would have finished me off. As it was, I lay trying to get warm, and wondering whether it mightn’t be better to leave Susan and Ruddington to patch up their ridiculous match in their own unthinkable way. At a quarter to seven Susan brought me three perfect square inches of toast, and a perfect tablespoonful of China tea in that sweet little thin birds’-egg-coloured porcelain cup which I thought was broken. She saw at once that I hadn’t slept; and, in her quiet, untoadying, genuine old way, she was ever so much concerned. But I didn’t let her begin talking. I must do my duty by Susan.