"Oh, Miss!" she sobbed, "on Friday I told you a lie. I told you that I didn’t copy it out in my own writing because I didn’t think----" She stopped. "Well?" I said, after I had waited long enough. "I thought, Miss," sobbed Susan, "I thought ... I was afraid, if he saw my writing, he might give me up. And what you’d wrote looked so beautiful and ladylike, Miss, that----" She couldn’t go on. "Susan," I said, "you’ve acted very wrongly. You’ve done wrong to me, and you’ve deceived Lord Ruddington. Worse still, you’ve done wrong to yourself. If he really cared for you, he wouldn’t have been turned away by bad writing. But he won’t admire deceit. You’ve taken the first step on the wrong path, and you don’t know what will be the end." I am getting to be a practised preacher. Since last Thursday, I’ve laid down more of the moral law than in all the rest of my life. Susan heard me in meekness. "I know it was wicked," she said; "but oh, Miss, do please, _please_ write the letter to-day! It won’t be many times more." "If I do it one time more, I expect I shall have to do it fifty." Susan looked mysterious. "No, Miss," she said with assurance, "not fifty." "Why not?" I asked. And, after some pressing, Susan confessed that she has snatched five hours from sleep since Friday for the express purpose of conforming her penmanship to the pattern of mine. She showed me some specimens, and I was astonished at the advance she had made. "Well, Susan," I said at last, "I don’t like it at all, and I’m very angry with you. But if there’s any prospect of your going on improving like this in your writing, perhaps it will be as well for me to write your next two or three letters. Then I sha’n’t need to be brought into the affair, so far as Lord Ruddington is concerned, at all." Susan’s gratitude was touching. "I’ll never forget how good you’ve been to me, Miss," she said, choking down a sob. "Find Georgette," I said. "While she’s clearing the table, bring down my writing-case. We’ll do it under the trees." Susan danced off with a skittishness that surprised me. When she came back, I asked her what she had decided to say. "I was thinking, Miss," she said, "we might say how nice it would have been if he’d galloped over the Heath to the station. And don’t you think, Miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb?" "Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan," I said peremptorily. "As for the Heath, it would have been very wrong of him. But how are you going to answer his postscript--this long bit at the end, all about your leaving me at once?" "Leaving _you_, Miss?" asked Susan, mystified. "Yes," I said, looking at her. "Don’t you see? Lord Ruddington wants you to leave me at once." Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan everything, and took her back to my heart. "Oh, no, Miss!" she cried. "I didn’t understand he meant that. I wouldn’t ever do that."