“One good turn deserves another.... Of course you and Nick are welcome to stay all summer.... There won’t be a particle of expense for you--the servants have orders.... If you’ll just be an angel and post these letters yourself.... It’s been my only chance for such an age; when we meet I’ll explain everything. And in a month at latest I’ll be back to fetch Clarissa....” Susy lifted the letter to the lamp to be sure she had read aright. To fetch Clarissa! Then Ellie’s child was here? Here, under the roof with them, left to their care? She read on, raging. “She’s so delighted, poor darling, to know you’re coming. I’ve had to sack her beastly governess for impertinence, and if it weren’t for you she’d be all alone with a lot of servants I don’t much trust. So for pity’s sake be good to my child, and forgive me for leaving her. She thinks I’ve gone to take a cure; and she knows she’s not to tell her Daddy that I’m away, because it would only worry him if he thought I was ill. She’s perfectly to be trusted; you’ll see what a clever angel she is....” And then, at the bottom of the page, in a last slanting postscript: “Susy darling, if you’ve ever owed me anything in the way of kindness, you won’t, on your sacred honour, say a word of this to any one, even to Nick. And I know I can count on you to rub out the numbers.” Susy sprang up and tossed Mrs. Vanderlyn’s letter into the fire: then she came slowly back to the chair. There, at her elbow, lay the four fatal envelopes; and her next affair was to make up her mind what to do with them.