A little sound—the creaking of a rusty hinge—at this moment attracts his attention, and Susan’s also. They glance quickly towards the little green gate of the Cottage. It is slowly opening! And now a face peeps out—very cautiously, very nervously. CHAPTER XXV. ‘Dear, if you knew what tears they shed Who live apart from home and friend, To pass my house, by pity led, Your steps would tend.’ It is the face that had peeped out of the branches of the sycamore-tree a little while ago. A charming face! The eyes glance down the little lane, and then, suddenly seeing Susan, rest with a frightened expression on her. As this is the first time in all Susan’s experience that anyone has ever betrayed the smallest fear of her, she naturally gives herself up to the contemplation of her new-born slave. Her eyes and those of the mysterious stranger meet. ‘Oh, how pretty!’ thinks Susan to herself, but she says nothing, being lost in wonder and admiration; and the girl, peeping out of the doorway, as if disheartened, draws back again, and will in another minute disappear altogether, but for Carew. He makes a sharp gesture. ‘Wait!’ cries he, in a low tone, though hardly conscious that he is speaking at all. And again the pretty frightened head comes into sight between the leaves of the luxuriant ivy that frames the gate. ‘Susan!’ says Carew, in a voice of low and hurried entreaty; and Susan, responding to it, speeds quickly up the road and into the little gateway. ‘Oh, come in—come in!’ breathes the stranger in a whisper, putting out her hands and catching Susan’s in a soft grasp. ‘I have seen you so often; I’—flushing and smiling timidly—‘have watched you from the sycamore many a day. And it’s very lonely here. You will come in for a moment, won’t you?’ Susan smiles back at her, and passes through the small green gate. Ella, pleased and palpitating, glances back, to see Carew looking after them like a young culprit at the door of a forbidden paradise. ‘Won’t you come too?’ cries she, beneath her breath, in that soft, curiously frightened sort of a way that seems to belong to her. ‘Hurry! hurry!’ She looks anxious, and it is only, indeed, when Carew has come inside the gate, and she has with her own fingers fastened and secured it, that the brightness returns to her face. ‘It’s very good of you,’ says she, smiling rather shyly at Susan. ‘Oh no!’ cries Susan, with a charming courtesy that belongs to her; ‘it is very good of you to let us come and see you. You know’—softly—‘we had heard—understood—that you did not wish to be intruded on. That is’—stammering faintly—‘that you didn’t wish to see people, and so—’