A thief! She had called him a thief! He—Mr. Crosby—the distinguished traveller! Oh! what is to become of her? Not even now, at this last gasp, does she try to persuade herself that the man in the Crosby pew was a fraud—that he wasn’t Mr. Crosby. She knows as positively as though she had been introduced to him that he is Mr. Crosby. Introduced to him! As if——She covers her face with her hands. No, no; there need be no fear of that. He will go away soon—at once. People say he cannot bear civilized life; that he always hankers after savages, and lions, and things. He will go away, of course. Oh, if only he will go away soon enough, and never come back! Susan, with her hands before her gentle eyes, has sudden dreams of people who have been devoured by lions, and for the first time fails to see the extreme horror of it. Yes, he will go away soon; and in the meantime—well, in the meantime it is very unlikely that she will come face to face with him. ‘Susan, Susan! are you there?’ ‘Yes,’ says Susan. She goes to the door, and finds Jacky on the threshold of it. ‘Dinner is ready,’ says that solemn youth; ‘and they sent me up for you.’ ‘I can’t come down,’ says Susan. ‘I have a headache. Jacky—dear, dear Jacky, say I have a headache. And I have, too—I have indeed. There won’t be any lie. The heat—you must have felt the heat in church—you fell asleep——’ ‘Yes, I know,’ says Jacky, in his queer way, that always expresses anger with difficulty suppressed. ‘You won’t come down, then?’ ‘No; I can’t—I——’ She lifts her hand to her head. Jacky hesitates, turns slowly, and then throws a glance at her. ‘Susan, did you see that man in the Crosby pew?’ Susan’s nerves being a little overwrought, she almost jumps at this. ‘Yes, yes,’ says she in a hurried way. ‘He was very like the thief, wasn’t he?’ says Jacky anxiously. Susan colours hotly. ‘Nonsense, Jacky’—with a very poor attempt at scorn. ‘That gentleman in Mr. Crosby’s pew was, I think, Mr. Crosby himself, or, at all events, some friend of his.’ ‘Well, the thief was the image of him,’ says Jacky slowly. That’s the worst of Jacky, he is always so abominably slow. ‘I looked at him, and I said to myself, “That’s Susan’s thief,” and,’ with awful obstinacy, ‘I think it was, too.’ ‘No, no, no!’ says Susan. ‘It was Mr. Crosby, I tell you. I saw Lady Millbank nod and smile at him.’ Jacky considers. ‘Very well,’ says he, in a thoroughly unconvinced tone. He moves away a bit and then looks back. ‘If that is true,’ says he, ‘Mr. Crosby looks like a thief.’ * * * * *