Susie laid down her knife and raised her honest brown eyes to fix them fully on Mrs Fortescue's face. The widow pushed her chair round so that the light should not fall too full on her countenance. "Yes," she continued, "and I have come here to own my fault. I fear your father was deeply annoyed with me. Is that true?" "`Annoyed' is not exactly the word," said Susie, in a low tone. "Well--well, dear," said Mrs Fortescue, who did not wish Susie to say too much and trembled also with regard to her future reference. "You, who have your fixed and settled income can scarcely understand what it is to be a woman of my means--a woman with an uncertain, a fluctuating supply of money; enough just for her bare needs one year, and too little for them the next. I lost my temper--not, indeed, with the girls themselves, but with that exceedingly deceitful man, Mr Timmins, who might have told me how the dear children were placed long, long before he did. He deceived me, he deceived us all." "The girls were not to blame, were they?" said Susie, resuming the cutting of her orange peel with considerable energy. "Oh, no, no--indeed no!" said Mrs Fortescue; "and that is just what I have come to talk about. I have recovered my temper and repented of my injustice. I am now thinking, not so much of myself, although I shall have to find some young girls to mother, in the future--" Susie again looked at her attentively--"but I have not come here to talk of that now. I am anxious about the Heathcotes, poor dears! Poor dears! the world will receive them coldly--" "I do not think so," said Susie. Mrs Fortescue shook her head. "You do not know the world, Susie Arbuthnot. You think you do; but you don't. The fact is--it shudders at the poor, and the older it grows, the more it despises poverty, the more it requires every one whom it takes to its heart to be rich--_rich_." Susie was silent. "Those poor young things," continued Mrs Fortescue--"if there is any way in which I can help them--I came here this morning. Susie, to tell you that I am willing to do it." "Are you really?" said Susie. She looked at her abruptly. "Would you, for instance, give them a home if they required it?" "I--" said Mrs Fortescue, hesitating--"well, not for long--but just for a little visit perhaps. What I really meant to say was that I could furnish them with excellent references, and--what is the matter, Susie?" "Nothing," said Susie, rising. "I am going to find father. I think he is in the house." She abruptly left the room, closing the door after her. "What a very queer look Susie Arbuthnot has on her face!" thought Mrs Fortescue. "I wonder if those people have made up their minds to shun me. If so, and if Major Reid means to continue to be as abominable as he has been this morning, I had better leave Langdale."