To this she agreed, being guileless, and the lawyer rode away after the other. All that day and all the next Suzanne scarcely spoke to me, but I saw that she was expecting something to happen, and that she glanced continually towards the path by which the Englishmen had journeyed, thinking to see them riding back to the farm. But they rode back no more, and I am sure that the cunning lawyer never breathed one word of his meeting with Suzanne and of what took place at it to the young lord. That book was shut and it did not please him to reopen it, since to do so might have cost him ten thousand pounds. On the third morning I found Suzanne still looking down the path, and my patience being exhausted by her silence, I spoke to her sharply. “What are you doing, girl?” I asked. “Have we not had enough visitors of late that you must stand here all day awaiting more?” “I seek no new visitors,” Suzanne said, “but those who have been here only, and I see now that I seek in vain.” “What do you mean, Suzanne?” Now of a sudden she seemed to make up her mind to speak, for she turned and faced me boldly, saying: “I mean, mother, that I told the Englishman with the red hair, the agent, that all the fine tale you spun to him about Ralph was false, and that he _was_ the man they came to find.” “You dared to do that, girl?” I said, then checked myself and added, “Well, what did the man say?” “He said that he would ride on and bring the young lord back that I might talk with him, but they have not come.” “No, nor will they, Suzanne, for if they sought they did not wish to find, or at least the lawyer did not wish it, for he had too much at stake. Well, things have gone finely with you, seeing that your hands are clean from sin, and that Ralph still stays at your side.” “The sin of the parents is the sin of the child,” she answered, and then of a sudden she took fire as it were, and fell upon me and beat me with her tongue; nor could I hold my own before this girl of eighteen, the truth being that she had right on her side, and I knew it. She told me that we were wicked plotters who, to pleasure ourselves, had stolen from Ralph everything except his life; and many other such hard sayings she threw at me till at last I could bear it no more, but gave her back word for word. Indeed, it would be difficult to say which had the best of that quarrel, for if Suzanne’s tongue was the nimbler and her words were winged with truth, I had the weight of experience on my side and the custom of authority. At last, as she paused breathless, I cried out: “And for whose sake was all this done, you ungrateful chit, if it was not for your own?” “If that was so, which is not altogether true,” she answered, “it would have pleased me better, if, rather than make me a partner in this crime, and set me as bait to snare Ralph, you had left me to look after my own welfare.”