‘Good-bye, Susan,’ says Crosby, coming up at this moment to the slim maiden who bears that name. ‘Though you deserted me so shamelessly a while ago, I bear you no ill-will. I understood the action. It was a guilty conscience drove you to it. I asked you a simple question, and you refused to answer it. I ask it again now.’ A pause, during which Susan taps her foot on the ground, and tries to assume a puzzled air that would not have deceived a boy. ‘And you still refuse, Susan?’—tragically. ‘Is it that you can’t?’ ‘Can’t what?’—blushing fatally. ‘Can’t say that the redoubtable James is nothing to you.’ ‘I suppose you want to drive me away again,’ says Susan demurely. ‘That subterfuge won’t answer a second time. Don’t dream of it. If you attempt to fly me now, I warn you that I shall grapple with that blue tie round your neck, and—you wouldn’t like a scene, Susan, would you? Come, is he nothing to you?’ ‘I really wonder,’ says Susan, struggling with a desire for laughter that brightens up her pretty eyes and curves the corners of her lips, ‘that after all I have said before you should still persist in this nonsense.’ ‘That still is no answer. I don’t even know if it is nonsense. I begin to suspect you of being a diplomatist, Susan.’ ‘I am not,’ says she, a little indignantly. ‘I am nothing in the world but what you see—just Susan Barry.’ ‘And that means—shall I tell you what that means?’ He is smiling lightly, easily, but a good deal of heartfelt passion can lie behind a smile. ‘Shall I?’ This is another question. But Susan, softly glancing, puts that question by. ‘What, no answer to anything?’ ‘Not to silly things.’ She shakes her head. ‘Besides, it’s my turn now. Do you’—she lays her hand lightly on his arm and looks cautiously round her—‘do you think it—is all right?’ ‘All right? How should I know? You refuse to answer me, and what do I know of James?’ ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Her soft voice shows irritation, and her hand trembles on his arm as if she would dearly like to shake him. ‘I begin to hate James.’ ‘Ah, now we get near the answer,’ says he. ‘I feel better. Go on. What’s to be all right?’ ‘You saw Ella—Mr. Wyndham’s tenant, you know—in the tree over there a little time ago. What do you think about it? I thought Mrs. Prior looked put out. But what can it matter to her who is living there? Did she want the Cottage?’ ‘It seems a fair solution of the problem,’ says Crosby thoughtfully, and, after all, truthfully enough. Certainly Mrs. Prior has worked for eighteen months, not only for the Cottage, but for the owner of the Cottage and all the rest of his possessions for her daughter. ‘But she won’t be disagreeable to poor Ella, will she?’ ‘Won’t she, if she gets the chance!’ thinks Crosby. ‘Must see that she doesn’t get it, though. No, no; of course’—out aloud. ‘And you think it doesn’t matter her being seen; that nothing will come of it?’