Before she carried the note up to the hotel to leave it for Ruddington, she was all bright excitement and chattering importance. We had quite a gay quarter of an hour settling what she should wear on the beach. She is going to meet him in her navy-blue serge which she has hardly worn, with white gloves and quite a Parisian hat which she has taken over from Georgette. It is of soft, fine, blue straw, made cocked-hat-shape, with two downy, snow-white wings. "What must I do, Miss, when he comes up to me?" she asked. I didn’t ask what she meant. Perhaps she thinks she ought to bob a curtsy. "You won’t do anything," I answered. "He will come up saying he got your note, or how good it is of you to come, or something like that. Don’t be too stiff. Hold out your hand simply and easily." "I was wondering, Miss..." began Susan. But she cut herself short, blushing violently. "You were wondering...?" I echoed. "I was wondering, Miss ... will he want to kiss me?" I blushed with her. "Really, Susan," I said, "you must look after yourself." "My last letter was so loving, Miss," said Susan doggedly. "It was, and it wasn’t," I answered with cunning. "The point is this. You’ve refused Gibson." Susan winced. But I went on. "You’ve refused Gibson. And you’ve made up your mind that you will marry Lord Ruddington--if you like the look of him when you see him in real life. It’s your affair, Susan, not mine. But, as for kisses ... well, surely, he won’t offer them and you won’t take them till you are both decided what you are going to do." "Then I’ll tell him he mustn’t, Miss," said dutiful Susan. Later on, she asked: "Please, Miss Gertrude, what will he say to me?" "Dear me, Susan, I might be a witch. How do I know what he’ll say to you?" She endured my sarcasm. But Susan still believes that I know everything. It has never entered her head why I wrote that fatal love-letter to Ruddington on Tuesday. She accepts it simply as one more proof of my all-round efficiency. She wonders at it no more than she wonders at my writing adequate letters to my solicitor, or banker, or to a tenant. She thinks I know all about love, just as I know about law and business--as part of a liberal education. "I don’t mean his very words, Miss," she said. "I mean, Miss, what will he talk about?" "For one thing," I replied, glad of the chance, "he’ll talk about your letters. And that’s a point I want to mention. Some day a way will be found of making a clean breast of everything. But, until I have seen him, and he is safely back in England, you mustn’t give him the faintest shadow of a hint that any of those letters were mine. If you do, there’ll be such a muddle that I don’t see how we can get out of it." "I know, Miss, I know!" said Susan alarmed. "I sha’n’t breathe a single word."