For example, just now I went into Susan’s room to make sure that she had taken me out of her frame. I find that, instead of taking me out, she’s left me in, and taken out Ruddington. There I am, staring across the hinges at an empty oval. Last time I saw the frame it had both of us in it, and Susan’s room was warm and brilliant with floods of morning sunshine. But, just now, her room was chill and dim. The paper background of the empty oval showed up ghostly white. I walked to the mantelpiece, and gazed at my own photograph. Instead of looking like one half of a happy honeymoon couple, I looked like a girl-widow staring at a shroud. Outside, in the sunless garden, a gust of wind smote a leafy apple-branch against the window, like a slap of a hand; and at the same moment a great dreariness, an utter loneliness, fell like a blight, like a frost, like a black shadow, on my soul. I have come back to my own room, where it is more cheerful. But I see that I have written too much to-day in this book. Since sunrise this morning I must have written two or three hours. No wonder I am morbid and dumpy! I swear an oath. Whatever happens, and whatever Susan may report, not another word will I write to-day. _Thursday morning, in the summer-house_. I hate to think of yesterday. Hitherto I have hugged a fond belief that my nerves were of steel. Yet the trivial shock of Gibson’s chase, coming on top of my early rising, bowled me over for the rest of the day. It is humiliating to read all the stuff I wrote in this book--the feverish retrospects, prospects, introspects. After I had skimmed through it this morning, I nearly vowed to lock it up and not write another word until I am back in England. But, if I don’t jot them in a diary, I mix up dates so frightfully. For example, I was trying the other night to remember the three days when Ruddington saw me with Susan. While Alice was with me, I let this book slide; and the result is I can’t recall being with Susan once except at the post-office; and Susan declares that Ruddington’s photograph isn’t the least like the young man who stared at her in a dark green suit. I don’t even remember where Susan was while he was feasting his eyes on her through the pillars of the monument. Perhaps she sat behind Alice and me. Or did she sit with the servants? It’s tantalizing to think that perhaps I’ve seen him, and perhaps stared back at him, and that it’s all slipped out of my mind. So I sha’n’t stop entering things in this journal. But I mean to enter them more curtly. Luckily there isn’t much to write about Susan and Gibson, even if I were disposed to write it. Susan didn’t come back till half-past four. Until after dinner she avoided the subject; and it was only when I was mounting to a very early bed that I asked any questions. "Well, Susan," I said, "and what have you done with poor Gibson?" "I’ve sent him home, Miss." "To England?" "Oh no, Miss. To Grandpont."